The University Libraries will host prominent digital humanities scholar Orla Murphy of University College Cork, Ireland, for a presentation on Monday, April 20, from 2 to 3 p.m., in Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library. “Inch by Inch… Building Institutional Capacity for DH Through Inter- and Trans-disciplinary Collaboration” will be open to the public and will be followed by a reception in Mann Assembly Room, 103 Paterno Library.

Murphy teaches in the School of English and in the discipline of Digital Arts and Humanities at Cork, where her research interests lie in how culture is, was and will be communicated in all its forms, including 3D representation, and in how we read, represent and share knowledge in new networked, virtual environments. In this presentation, she will discuss the development of institutional capacity for Digital Humanities, addressing the paradigm of distributed disciplinary status and what it can offer as a model for capacity development in the field.

Murphy’s contributions to research and understanding in the field at an international level are significant. She chairs the information visualization working group in the NeDiMAH.eu initiative (the European network for digital methods in the Arts and Humanities) and is vice-chair of the algorithms group in the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action Colour and Space in Cultural Heritage, where she convenes the successful international Think Tank series for Early Stage Researchers. She also represents Ireland on the management committee of genderSTE, a policy-driven targeted network funded by COST. Murphy was awarded an inaugural Fulbright Tech Impact Scholar award for 2014-2015.

“Dr. Murphy’s talk will be very relevant to digital scholarship at Penn State, particularly the ongoing collaborations between the University Libraries and College of the Liberal Arts. She has shared many of the same experiences and challenges that we currently face in attempting to further our capacity for interdisciplinary research, so it will be a great opportunity for the exchange of knowledge and ideas,” says James O’Sullivan, Digital Humanities research designer at Penn State.

This presentation is co-sponsored by the University Libraries Colloquium Committee and the University Libraries Publishing and Curation Services. If you anticipate needing accommodations or have questions about the physical access provided, contact Martha Ney, mdn1@psu.edu /814-863-5447, in advance of your participation. For more information about the program, email O’Sullivan at josullivan@psu.edu.