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Distributed for University of London Press

Reframing Failure in Digital Scholarship

Tackles what failure, in all its messy but immensely valuable complexity, means for the digital humanities community.

Failure is ordinary. From technological failures and computational obsolescence to rejected applications and challenging collaborations, failure is an unavoidable part of any scholarly endeavor. This is especially true for digital scholarship, as the everyday risk of failure is compounded by the challenges of interdisciplinary research and the fragility of digital technology.

Reframing Failure in Digital Scholarship brings together a diverse, interdisciplinary, and international group of scholars and practitioners who each offer short personal and professional reflections on the failed, broken, or challenging aspects of scholarly practice. It provides a critical perspective on the ways institutional and material conditions are intractably linked to approaches to digital research and how those conditions differ within and across national contexts.

In creating a critical, constructive, and compassionate vocabulary for failure, this book normalizes failure as an object of inquiry, asking what value exists in failure in digital scholarship and how we can create the space to fail better.
 

222 pages | 6 halftones, 6 line diagrams | 5.51 x 8.5 | © 2025

Digital Studies


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Table of Contents

๐—œ๐—ป๐˜๐—ฟ๐—ผ๐—ฑ๐˜‚๐—ฐ๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป: ๐—ฅ๐—ฒ๐—ณ๐—ฟ๐—ฎ๐—บ๐—ถ๐—ป๐—ด ๐—ณ๐—ฎ๐—ถ๐—น๐˜‚๐—ฟ๐—ฒ
Anna-Maria Sichani and Michael Donnay

๐—ฃ๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐˜ ๐—œ: ๐—œ๐—ป๐—ป๐—ผ๐˜ƒ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป
1. Stop lying to yourself: Collective delusion and Digital Humanities grant funding โ€” Quinn Dombrowski
2. Risk, failure and the assessment of innovative research โ€” Jane Winters
3. Innovation, tools, and ecology โ€” Christopher Ohge
4. Software at play โ€” David De Roure

๐—ฃ๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐˜ ๐—œ๐—œ: ๐—ง๐—ฒ๐—ฐ๐—ต๐—ป๐—ผ๐—น๐—ผ๐—ด๐˜†
5. Brokenness is social โ€” Frances Corry
6. A career in ruins? Accepting imperfection and celebrating failures in digital preservation and digital archaeology โ€” Jenny Mitcham
7. Living well with brokenness in an inclusive research culture: what we can learn from failures and processes in a Digital Humanities lab โ€” Arianna Ciula
8. Can we be failing? โ€” Joris J. van Zundert

๐—ฃ๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐˜ ๐—œ๐—œ๐—œ: ๐—–๐—ผ๐—น๐—น๐—ฎ๐—ฏ๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป
9. Doing, failing, learning: understanding what didnโ€™t work as a key research finding in action research โ€” Arran J. Rees
10. Navigating the challenges and opportunities of collaboration โ€” Jennifer Stertzer
11. Challenging the pipeline structure: a reflection on the organisational flow of interdisciplinary projects โ€” Caio Mello
12. When optimisation fails us โ€” Jentery Sayers
13. Reframing โ€˜reframingโ€™: A holistic approach to understanding failure โ€” Lauren Tuckley

๐—ฃ๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐˜ ๐—œ๐—ฉ: ๐—œ๐—ป๐˜€๐˜๐—ถ๐˜๐˜‚๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป๐˜€
14. Permission to experiment with literature as data and fail in the process โ€” Jennifer Isasi
15. What to do with failure? (What does failure do?) โ€” Brittany Amell
16. The remaining alternatives โ€” Elena Spadini
17. Who fails and why? Understanding the systemic causes of failure within and beyond the Digital Humanities โ€” Naomi Wells
18. Experimental publishing: Acknowledging, addressing, and embracing failure โ€” Janneke Adema
19. Writing about research methods: sharing failure to support success โ€” Anisa Hawes and Riva Quiroga
20. Bridging the distance: Confronting geographical failures in Digital Humanities conferences โ€” Nabeel Siddiqui

๐—–๐—ผ๐—ป๐—ฐ๐—น๐˜‚๐˜€๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป: ๐—ข๐—ป ๐—ณ๐—ฎ๐—ถ๐—น๐—ถ๐—ป๐—ด
Anna-Maria Sichani and Michael Donnay
 

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