Formal Representation and the Digital Humanities

Book excerpt: What do linguistics, philology and even cultural studies have in common? There can be many answers for this question; certainly, however, they all have to deal with the new technologies and methods that go by the name of “Digital Humanities”. Today, all human sciences are facing new challenges both from the methodological point of view and from their very scientific contents. Accordingly, the number of research fields and approaches represented in this volume is large, reflecting the complexity of the problems of formalization, computation and digitalization of data and resources. The future of human sciences will be marked by the ever-increasing importance of formal models and computational tools, and the effective communication among the specialists of different fields is crucial for the scientific success of every single area of research. This collection of cutting-edge, high-quality papers is a fundamental step towards a better definition of the role the “Digital Humanities” will play in the next years.