I’m not sure I can call it a long break when I’ve hardly started this blog, but it’s not for lack of things to report. Just lack of time. The summer whistled by: a very enjoyable but exhausting Digital Humanities 2010 conference, which King’s hosted; various project launches; and then a wonderful – but not remotely relaxing – family roadtrip which we started in Pamplona, where I used to live, before slowly wending our way back home through France to Oxford  by car.

I learned just before we went off on holiday that I would become Acting Head of Department for CCH soon after my return, something which has not suprisingly taken up a lot of my time in the last few weeks, but which has been very enjoyable at the same time. They have been momentous times for CCH, with two of our historic figures, Harold Short and  Willard McCarty, retiring (although both are still present in a post-retirement capacity) and a number of other changes. I feel fortunate to have many great colleagues here, including a number of very talented younger scholars, and we have been working very hard the past few weeks to make it a smooth transition, with a number of changes: Elena Pierazzo has become our new programme co-ordinator for the MA in Digital Humanities; Frederik Lesage is this year’s programme co-ordinator for the MA in Digital Culture; and Elena Pierazzo is the joint programme co-ordinator for the new MA in Digital Asset Management, which we share with the Centre for E-Research. Willard McCarty continues to run our PhD programme, while John Bradley and Paul Vetch continue as Project Managers.

With a number of long-standing projects finishing, it has also been a busy time for the project team. First we had the launch of the AHRC-funded Jane Austen Fiction Manuscripts project, which courted UK national publicity, then we had the launch of the JISC-funded Anglo-Saxon Cluster project. More recently, we had the official launch of AHRC-funded PASE II and PASE Domesday websites (mentioned on Stephen Baxter’s BBC Domesday documentary in August). There have been launches or significant events for a number of other projects, too numerous to include here, but which include The Musicians of Britain and Ireland (itself an extension of the CHARM project), the Out of the Wings project and the Schenker Documents Online project.

Busy times, and against a rather worrying economic backdrop, but we’re also excited about the challenges ahead and have various changes planned which I hope to report on soon.

Inevitably much of the attention here at CCH is currently focused on our preparations for the Digital Humanities 2010 conference. I am one of the co-chairs, but with the completion of the work on the book of conference abstracts on Friday (led by Elena Pierazzo, and also involving various people including Charlotte Tupman, Paul Vetch, Harold Short and Camille Desenclos) and the near completion of the web publication of conference abstracts (with additional development by Jamie Norrish), we are now one important step closer to having things ready.

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Welcome to my blog! I have been embarrassed at the state of my personal website for some time – the usual saying about the cobbler’s children not having shoes certainly holds true here – and so am going to make a concerted effort to be more active in future. This blog represents my personal take on my professional activity, and my aim is to provide a more informal background to some of the work being carried out here at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s College London and more broadly within areas of research that interest me, in particular in the Digital Humanities.

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