Exploring Conferences as Sites of Public Digital Humanities in Times of Crisis

Building on the facilitators’ mobilized humanities work, including hosting hackathons for Torn Apart/Separados (http://xpmethod.plaintext.in/torn-apart/volume/1/) outside of the DH2018 conference, this forum explores how to effectively create space at conferences for public digital humanities that responds to political, social, and environmental crises. Participants take part in two activities: 1) an exercise doing mobilized public digital humanities and 2) a discussion of successes and challenges of the experience to articulate effective practices for undertaking mobilized public digital humanities at conferences. The outcomes of the forum will be disseminated through the Nimble Tents Toolkit (https://nimbletents.github.io), a set of how-to guides for public digital humanities, with all participants who wish to be named receiving credit. All conference attendees can fully participate, regardless of their humanities or technological skillsets, and can do so with the technology they have available to them - laptops, smartphones, tablets - or by working with a partner.