Today marks the end of the four … interesting … years of my time as Head of the Department (HoD) of Digital Humanities at King’s College London. In a a College-wide briefing to HoDs last year, the Principal, Professor Shitij Kapur, described HoDs as “the line in the institution where the PowerPoints, the policy papers, the spreadsheets become the actions which make people’s lives better or worse”. I felt at the time that this description hit the nail on the head, and it has thus stuck with me. So: this is not another “reflecting on what is Digital Humanities” post (as I recently did for Viewfinder magazine), or an overview of my subject’s direction of travel (as I recently tried to offer in my Inaugural Lecture); rather I am going celebrate today by capturing a few insights into what I (think I) have learned by being part of the line.
Firstly, in general I have come to dislike the term “leadership role” in an academic setting. “Taking on a leadership role” sounds rather box-ticky, something you do for the CV, or for the probation or promotion panel. “Service” is slightly better, with connotations of facilitating actions for the greater good of a bigger whole in a way that “leadership role” doesn’t. “Citizenship” I think is a bit too generic. “Leadership role” still sets itself apart from the main business of working life. At risk of sounding cliched and/or trite, the aim of a “leadership role”, however flawed the term might be, should be to make life better for all and, by expecting high standards of it, oneself and others, to elevate the institution as a whole.
So far, so worthy. Having got that out however, I am not so overrefined as to claim this is why I put myself forward for the job in summer of 2019 (although it is something I have come to realise, and judge myself on, in the meantime). Rather, in 2019, DDH was still in the throes of rapid and turbulent expansion in both student and staff numbers, some of it planned, some of it unplanned. I guess I felt that all the components of a vibrant, exciting Digital Humanities research agenda were there, one which was distinct from the kinds of DH done elsewhere, yet which had evolved and grown from twenty or more years of DH teaching and research at King’s. We could, I told myself, create the twenty first century successor to a long tradition of digital scholarship in, for and about the humanities. However, the whirlwind of constant expansion was stopping us from putting it all together. With several great opportunities and specific problems to address, it therefore seemed an exciting time to take on the role. In February 2020, shortly before becoming busy with other things, I published a post on here marking my first six months as HoD. In this, I argued that
DDH’s story is one of evolution, development, and even – perhaps contrary to some appearances – continuity. This is an impression driven by the kind of question that we have always asked at King’s … The prepositions “with” and “about” [the Digital, our strapline] provide space for a multivocal approach, which includes both the work DDH(/CCH) has excelled at in the past, and that which it does now.
Life, however, gets in the way of the very best plans. I became, of course, a “Covid era HoD”, and like many, my time became defined by the pandemic. During those first months of 2020, I remember learning, quickly, how to take one day, and one piece of information, at a time, and how try not to participate in cascades of dodgy information, whether from inside or outside. I vividly remember that I learned about our first Covid case in the Department’s student body on Thursday 12th March 2020 at exactly 5.45 PM, 15 minutes before I was due to take the lectern to give a Gresham College lecture, which itself turned out to be the last in its series before lockdown came. Heady days indeed. Most, but not all, of our classroom teaching had finished by late March 2020, but we still had to adapt, or “pivot” as the term came to be very quickly. We found ourselves working in ways I certainly didn’t expect, having to form a small, agile, very centralised management team that could respond quickly to events that changed almost by the hour through the spring and summer. As a Department with many international postgraduate students, we were particularly exposed to the risks of lockdowns and travel bans. However, the launch of our new MSc in Digital Economy in September 2020 was a major success; and our “pivot” to online, while of course turbulent, worked. Thanks to the innovation and creative flair of my colleagues across the Department, we came through.
Since 2019, we have made a large number of new permanent academic appointments (bearing in mind there are various ways of counting this apparently simple statistic which are too convoluted to go into here, so I am not even going to try). Our professoriate has tripled from two to six, achieving 50/50 gender parity in the process. In the Department, a responsive and discursive research agenda is emerging. We have had considerable grant success, with a cumulative income well into the seven figures, since 2021. Most importantly though, we have seen the emergence of a set of interoperating research clusters in the Department: in Computational Humanities, Creative AI, Environmental Humanities, Global Digital Cultures, and the Centre for Digital Culture, which has now become an integral part of our Faculty’s new Digital Futures Institute. There is much, much work still to do: a year plus after returning to fully in-person teaching, steps are needed to build our research culture, especially with so many new colleagues. This will take time. The question which is always implicit in these conversations is how much time?
But “satisfaction”, whatever that is, remains elusive. This is not in any way a criticism of anyone, rather it is a manifestation of a bigger truth: like the black and white geese in the M. C. Escher image, a Department is two things at the same time. It is part of a larger institutional and intellectual ecosystem which fosters it, provides it with infrastructure, gives it an official and reputational home, shields it from occasional meteor strikes which would otherwise cause it (and its HoD) devastation, and expects things in return. It is simultaneously a community of scholars, a key part of whose job it is to be independent-minded, with a natural desire to question, to self-govern, and an inclination – indeed a responsibility – to develop a collective research agenda into which all can buy. And they also expect things in return. The purpose of the HoD is to enable their Department to exist in these two parallel states at the same time and – as much as possible – to maintain an equilibrium between them. The whole edifice exists in a state of constant negotiation and renegotiation. It is a journey with (hopefully) direction, but no final destination.
Being in a Department which has expanded so much and so quickly in the last decade has also brought some larger truths about Higher Education up close and personal. It is probably not too controversial to say that the national funding model, and the principles behind it, are no longer fit for purpose. Across the UK workloads are out of control, people are stretched, compromise become inevitable in areas where we would rather not compromise, and there is often a sense of “running to stay still”. This makes maintaining the equilibrium between the Escher geese harder and harder, and occupying the “line” in the institution as described by Prof Kapur, gives one a very clear perspective on this. My own two cents is that the traditional residential three year BA/one year Masters is certainly a gold standard for the humanities which must be jealously guarded. However, the idea that this one the one model is the best or only one for everyone belongs to an era – which, sadly I am old enough to remember – when an academic could know every student in a year cohort, or even a whole Department, by sight. This is why I am very glad that we have begun to experiment with professional education, career accelerators and short courses; smaller and more adaptable pedagogies of imparting our knowledge to those who need it in more flexible timeframes. Working in such an interdisciplinary field, and across so many disciplines, we have had to develop strong collaborative, pedagogical and method frameworks in our own research. Having worked on some of these experiments directly myself, I have come to believe that these frameworks are strong enough to be bought into the commercial and industry worlds without any compromising of academic standards or rigour. So maybe this points towards the future.
One of the achievements I am most proud of is instituting our King’s Public Lecture in Digital Humanities, a major new biennial platform for the field’s leading international scholars (which I am much looking forward to continuing to organize in 2025). It was inaugurated this May by the stellar Shannon Mattern, who tackled the issue of modelling doubt in the digital age. The ability to get to grips with doubt is unquestionably the most important skill I have learned. I thank all of those who have taught me this.
Stuart Dunn 