July 2009

The Archives

• Biography, Communication and Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Humanities, Life Writing, Literary Studies

  Digital Biography

  25.07.09 | Permalink | Comments Off on Digital Biography

  This paper reflects on an emerging field that has no accepted name or boundaries but is described here as “digital biography.” The activities, formats, and genres associated with this field are rarely linked with life writing or traditional biographical studies. Rather, this field is seen as the domain of those concerned with digital privacy, copyright, data preservation, and identity management. Over the past decade or so, critics in various disciplines, mainly legal studies, information management, multimedia design, and IT development, as well as sociology, psychology, and marketing, have focused on the complexity of online identity. Though online identity has become such a significant focus of attention in these disciplines, few who study biography have discussed it. Indeed, as Nigel Hamilton points out, biography itself has had less attention than one might expect for a field that “has enjoyed an extraordinary renaissance in recent years”, a field that, according to Carl Rollyson, is widely recognized as “the dominant non-fiction of our age”.

about

Professor Paul Arthur is Chair in Digital Humanities and Social Sciences and Director of the Centre for Global Issues, at Edith Cowan University, Australia. He speaks and publishes widely on major challenges and changes facing 21st-century society, from the global impacts of technology on culture and identity to migration and human rights. His latest book is Migrant Nation: Australian Culture, Society and Identity (ed., 2018). A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Paul Arthur has held visiting positions in Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America. He has served on the executive boards and councils of the global Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO); centerNet—the worldwide network of digital research centres (Co-Chair, 2015–2019); the International Auto/Biography Association (IABA); the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities (founding President 2011–2015, Vice-President 2018–2021); the Australasian Consortium of Humanities Research Centres (ACHRC); and the NeCTAR (National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources) Super Science initiative of the Australian Government. Click here for full Profile.

search

recent

• Migration Experiences: Acknowledging the Past, and Sustaining the Present and Future
• Migrating People, Migrating Data: Digital Approaches to Migrant Heritage
• Migrant Nation
• Engaging Collections and Communities: Technology and Interactivity in Museums
• Digital Postmodernism and Postcolonialism
• Things Fall Apart: Identity in the Digital World
• Data Portraits: Identity, Privacy, and Surveillance
• Coda: Data Generation
• Material Memory and the Digital
• Private Lives, Intimate Readings

Tag Cloud

18th Century Antipodes Australia Biography Cartography Collaboration Commemoration Communication Community Cross-Cultural Cultural Data Digital e-Research Exhibitions Experimental Fiction Genre Globalisation Heritage History Humanities Identity Informatics Infrastructure Interactive Interface Internet Life Writing Media Memory Mythology Narrative Networks Online Oral History Pacific Representation Storytelling Technology Textuality Theory Trauma Travel War