Paolo Monella, Esiste (e a che serve) l'umanista informatico? Profili di ricerca e scelte organizzative - Do digital humanists exist (and what are they for)? Research profiles and organizational choices
The old debate on the existence of a (trans)discipline "Digital Humanities" (DH) becomes particularly important for those who create a DH research project, and even more so for whose who create a new DH center. The issue boils down to this: is the "DHer" a specific research profile? If so, what is she for? What are her skills and role?
On an administrative level, should a DH research center hire permanent staff? If so, what should their profile be? How should collaborations be arranged between the center staff and the rest of the university? Some centers have hired IT people with exclusive IT skills, but the communication and collaboration between humanists from the university departments and this staff have often proved to be very difficult, since IT specialists and humanities scholars have been trained on very different paradigms.
A DH center should hire DHers. However, ironically, if a DH center searches scholars with solid DH skills that also are already tenured or have an Italian "ASN (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale)", it will hardly find them in Italy. Those who obtained an ASN or tenure, in order to do so, have been forced to push their DH training and research aside and invest more effort in the more traditional humanistic aspect of their research. On the other hand, those who have built a strong DH profile struggle to obtain an ASN or tenure. This is due to the fact that there is no "SSD (Settore Scientifico Disciplinare") for the DH in Italy.