6th Workshop on Visualization for the Digital Humanities

October 24, 2021 - IEEE VIS 2021

This year, you can contribute to VIS4DH 2021 in two ways - you can submit to the Paper track, or you can submit to the Provocations track. Our call for submissions is open to all fields of the humanities, social sciences and all branches of visualization. The workshop is intended to put different ways of seeing, knowing, articulating, and transforming arguments into dialogue in order to foster and to intensify collaborations between humanities and visualization researchers. We are particularly interested in papers and provocations that bring different disciplines together.

Paper Track

The Politics of Scale

This year, VIS4DH will revolve around the topic of “scale”. Visualization is often celebrated as a method to facilitate the exploration and interpretation of “big data”. But is scale a relevant yardstick to measure and characterize the challenges connected to humanities research questions? Scholars have warned about the development and focus on large-scale digital infrastructures within the humanities, suggesting that smaller datasets and lighter infrastructures could better support the needs of humanist researchers. Additionally, critical voices have pointed out the risk of reproducing assumptions about dominant cultures and groups while further marginalizing those who are less likely to be remembered. ‘Data humanism’ has been proposed to highlight the creative potential of “small data” in terms of personal impact. Choices of scale—in terms of data, tools, or teams—influence not only project outcomes but also research methods and processes. This year, we invite work around (but not limited to) the following questions:

Large scale approaches have been said to easily ignore context, to fetishize size and inflate their technical and scientific capabilities, which they rarely deliver. How can we mitigate these issues and effects of scale for existing large scale data infrastructures?
What other motivating factors should be taken into account regardless of scale? Are “volume, velocity and variety” our defining challenges, or should we deliberately shift the problem characterization in humanities projects towards data scarcity, sparsity, polysemy, uncertainty, historicity, quality, and contextuality?
What goes unseen when we look at massive datasets and large trends? How can information visualization techniques assist in bridging small and large scale findings?
How can we envision small data, small processes, small impact for visualization in the humanities?
What trade-offs in visibility (and in-visibility) are made when we consider different scales in projects at the intersection of visualization and the humanities research?
How can research at the intersection of visualization and the humanities counteract the dangers of data colonialism and of excluding marginalized positions?

We invite papers at the intersection of visualization and (digital) humanities that provide both theoretical and applied perspectives around these and other questions.

For our paper track we are seeking works from scholars in visualization, the humanities, social science, and the arts who use visualization as part of the process of analyzing and interrogating human culture. Submissions will present original research ideas or results as they relate to visualization for the digital humanities. Each submission should clearly state its specific contribution to this growing field of research.

Submission format

Submissions will take the form of short (4-6 page - excluding references) papers. Submissions are meant to describe and critically discuss works at the intersection of visualization and humanities research, including applied case studies and empirical results and/or theoretical perspectives. We welcome works that highlight the difficulties (and proposed solutions) of designing visualizations in the context of humanities research and/or applying concepts from humanities research to foster visualization research and design.

Authors of accepted papers will be invited to present their paper at the workshop as a pre-recorded video plus online discussion. All presentations will be followed by a lively discussion with workshop participants. The archiving and publication options for VIS4DH 2021 are still under development and will be detailed soon.

Submitting a paper

Paper submissions should be in PDF format following the two-column IEEE TVCG Conference Style Template (http://junctionpublishing.org/vgtc/Tasks/camera.html).

Papers should be submitted via PCS. Submission deadline will be July 30, 2021 (5pm PST). Notifications will be sent on August 16, 2021. Deadline for submitting an (optional) video preview for your presentation is on September 1, 2021 (see instructions at http://ieeevis.org/year/2021/info/presenter-information/fast-forward-and-video-previews). Deadline for submitting a video of your pre-recorded talk is on September 26, 2021 (see instructions at http://ieeevis.org/year/2021/info/presenter-information/talk-recording-guide).

Submissions to the Paper Tracks will be optionally double-blind. Authors wishing to submit their work double-blind should remove author information from the cover page of their submitted document, and take care to avoid identifying information in the submission itself.

Provocation Track

The Politics of Scale

Submissions to the VIS4DH Provocations track will take the form of a paragraph articulating a strongly-held viewpoint that addresses a particular perspective on this year’s workshop topic, The Politics of Scale. We especially seek submissions that likely will promote back-and-forth debate within the interdisciplinary VIS4DH community.

This year’s submissions to the Provocations track should reflect on one or several of the following questions:

What are the dangers of subscribing exclusively to either large-scale or small-scale approaches at the intersection of visualization and humanities research?
Is the dichotomy “large-scale or small-scale” real or perceived? And how much do questions of scale matter, if at all?
Do large-scale approaches to data and visualization promote dominant cultures? How do they play into existing marginalizations and biases in society?
Are questions of scale inherently political, and if so, in what sense? What is their influence on methodological choices?

Submission format

Submissions to the Provocations track should take the following format:

Title: Provide a title that roughly describes the topic of your provocation/viewpoint.
Summary of provocation (1 sentence): One-sentence summary that describes the essence of your viewpoint/argument.
Provocation statement & argument (200 words): Provides a brief description of your provocation and its argument.
Counter-Perspective(s) (optional, 100 words): Provides potential counter-arguments to your provocation.

Accepted authors will be invited to present their viewpoint and argument in the form of a panel discussion at the workshop. Accepted provocations will also be published on the workshop website. Submissions will be judged based on the quality of the argument they make as well as their likelihood of provoking fruitful discussion. Provocations presented and discussed at VIS4DH 2020 can be found here.

Submitting a provocation

Submissions to the Provocations Track should be submitted via EasyChair by August 27, 2021 (5pm PST). Notification will be sent on September 10, 2021.