Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH)

CCH developed first as a joint initiative of the School of Humanities and Information Services & Systems, beginning in 1988. The group took the name CCH in 1995, and it became a full academic department in the School of Humanities in 2002. It is responsible for a number of undergraduate courses and for two MA programmes: Digital Humanities; and Digital Culture & Technology. The latter is a highly inter-disciplinary programme, involving four Schools: Humanities, Law, Social Science & Public Policy, and Physical Sciences & Engineering. In collaboration with CeRch (see below) a new MA in Digital Asset Management will begin in September 2010. CCH initiated the world’s first PhD programme in Digital Humanities in 2005, and by the end of 2009 will have 10 registered PhD students.

CCH has a strong commitment to collaborative research. At any one time it is involved in more than 30 major projects, all characterized by collaboration within the School of Humanities, across the College, and beyond institutional and national boundaries.

CCH has been particularly successful in generating research income. Over the period 2000-08, CCH has itself received 6.8M GBP, with 10.5M GBP going to its research partners, making a combined total of 17.3M GBP. This level of success stems in part from the collaborative nature of its research engagements, in part from the research excellence of the School of Humanities, and in part from the critical mass of expertise CCH has developed across a wide range of discipline areas and technologies relevant to the digital humanities.

The funding has come from a range of agencies, in particular the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, the British Academy, and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). More recently CCH and CeRch have been successful in bids to the Economic & Social Sciences Research Council and the Physical Sciences & Engineering Research Council.

CCH has a number of embedded activities, including:

• King’s Visualisation Lab (KVL), a research group specializing in 3D visualisation and VR models, with particular reference to large architectural spaces, especially theatres;
• King’s Digital Consultancy Services (KDCS), which provides consultancy on all aspects of digital activity from initial planning of a digitization project to preservation, and has generated over 1M GBP in consultancy income over the past 5 years. Key long-term clients include the British Library and the National Libraries of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It has established the week-long Digital Futures Academy as an annual international event;
• The Office for Humanities Communication, which has a publication series, and organizes conferences and workshops, being one of the founding sponsors of the UK’s annual Digital Resources for the Humanities & Arts conference.