Digital Humanities (DH) is the annual international conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (AHDO, http://www.adho.org whose constituent organisations are the European Association for Digital Humanities, the Association for Computers and the Humanities, the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities / Société canadienne des humanités numériques, the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities, centerNet, and the Japanese Association for Digital Humanities. The next DH conference will be held at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland (http://dh2014.org/) on July 8-12, 2014, and DH 2015 will be in Sydney at the Parramatta campus of the University of Western Sydney from July 6-10, 2015.
The committees of DH and its constituent organizations now invite proposals to host DH in 2016, following an earlier call for expressions of interest issued through ADHO’s constituent organizations.
Traditionally, the conference alternated between North America and Europe, and it was held in the United States in 2013 and will be in Switzerland in 2014. But in 2015, we have already deviated from tradition by accepting a bid from Australia, and we continue to be interested in proposals for hosting the conference in areas where there are developed or developing Digital Humanities communities or organizations that have not hosted conferences. But please note that the local organizer must be a member of one of the ADHO constituent organizations (listed above).
The conference has regularly 500 attendees in recent instantiations with 3-4 days of papers and posters. There are normally 4-6 parallel sessions per time slot, and a small number of plenary presentations. Meetings of the committees of the constituent organizations precede the conference, and lunchtime slots are normally used for member meetings of constituent organizations.
The academic programme is selected and planned by an international Programme Committee appointed by ADHO constituent organizations. The local organizer at the host institution is responsible for the conference web site, provision of facilities, the production of a book of abstracts, a conference banquet, and any other social events that the local host thinks would be appropriate. The conference is entirely self-financed through conference fees and any other financial contributions that the local organizer is able to arrange. ADHO expects no payment from the local host in the event that the conference makes a profit, but no financial support is provided for the conference by ADHO or its constituent organizations, except in relation to the recipient of ADHO awards, such as named prizes or bursaries, and a modest incentive to ensure that the membership status of registrants is validated by the local host. In consultation with the Program Committee, the local organizer may suggest plenary speakers whose travel, subsistence and registration must be funded from the conference budget.
The local organizer is expected to set (and verify) three levels of fees: members of ADHO constituent organizations, non-members, and students. The difference between the fee levels for members and non-members should be no less than the cost of an individual subscription to ADHO’s main print journal, LLC, because subscription to the journal is what qualifies an individual for the member rate.
ADHO uses the conference management system Conftool, and the ADHO Conference Coordinating Committee provides support for this system, including access to data from previous conferences. Local organizers are required to use the Conftool system for registering participants, including participants in special events such as the banquet, but actual credit card payments are often processed outside Conftool, by the local organizer.
Proposals should include:
- overview of facilities at the host institution
- overview of local institutional engagement and support for the local organizer
- possible arrangements for social events, to include the conference banquet
- options for accommodation (with provisional costs)
- travel information and advice
- a provisional budget, with a provisional registration fee
- options for payment (credit card, foreign currency etc) by participants
Proposers must be prepared to give a short presentation and to answer questions at the ADHO Steering Committee meeting and Constituent Organisation meetings at the DH2014 conference in Lausanne, Switzerland in advance of DH2014. Budgets and other information about past conferences can be made available for planning purposes on request.
For further information, proposers may discuss their plans informally with the Chair of the ADHO Conference Coordinating Committee, John Nerbonne (<john’s-first-initial> dot <nerbonne’s-lastname> [at] rug dot nl). Proposals should be submitted to him in draft form by early June.