by Jonathan Blaney, Cambridge Digital Humanities

Our Digital Humanities & Research Software Engineering Summer School (https://www.cdcs.ed.ac.uk/DHRSE-Summer-School-2024/Programme) took place in Edinburgh this July with invaluable funding from the Society of RSE.

Twenty-two attendees from Scotland, the rest of the UK, and even further afield, gathered for four days of talks, discussions, workshops and social activities. Our programme was aimed at people interested in a career in the growing field of RSE within the humanities and social sciences and presented by people who do that kind of work in universities around the UK.

The first day was led by the Edinburgh hosts, the Centre for Data, Culture & Society (https://www.cdcs.ed.ac.uk) and the practical sessions focused on principles of data visualisation and using R and D3 to instantiate those principles. This was followed by Cambridge Digital Humanities (https://www.cdh.cam.ac.uk) presenting a day of talks and activities around writing sustainable code. Day 3 was given by King’s Digital Lab (https://kdl.kcl.ac.uk) and covered the challenges of digital creativity and creating impact while working effectively with collaborators and clients. The final day fell to the Turing Institute (https://www.turing.ac.uk) and, appropriately after such a collegiate week, focused on collaborating on code, with Git as a key tool for doing so.

The summer school attendees were engaged and enthusiastic throughout the four days. It was especially nice to see how well they collaborated with each other despite different levels of skills and experience, showing the soft skills that are so important for a potential RSE.

This was our first year since the pandemic where we held the entire summer school in person (last year was a hybrid of two days in person and two online). Funding from the Society of RSE helped us to offer bursaries to those who would otherwise have been unable to afford to attend, and to meaningfully encourage attendees identifying as from underrepresented backgrounds. We think that the Society’s generous contribution was put to good use, and we hope that the attendees who benefited from it thought so too.

This event was sponsored by the Society’s Events and Initiatives fund, which provides financial support for events and initiatives which support our mission statement and charitable objectives.