Affect, Archive & Artificial Intelligence

The Hamburg-Leeds Lecture Series 2025 "Affect, Archive & Artificial Intelligence" is jointly organized by Prof. Dr. Julia Nantke, Junior Professor at the University of Hamburg, and Dr. Dibyadyuti Roy, Assistant Professor at the University of Leeds.

The lecture series is the start of a larger cooperation planned between Hamburg and Leeds in the field of Digital Humanities.

Program of the Hamburg-Leeds Lecture Series

The lecture series is dedicated to the conditions of accessing, researching and representing cultural artefacts in the course of the latest developments in digitalisation. Through their digitisation, cultural artefacts are becoming more visible and accessible to a wider public. Digitisation also brings with it a drive towards standardisation, which is at odds with the individual characteristics of digitised objects and the individual interests and needs of users. The use of generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) offers new possibilities of access and potentially new insights into the structures and mechanisms of objects and related practices, including the affect of users interacting with digital data. At the same time, born digital artefacts such as data on floppy discs, CD ROMs and hard drives are increasingly entering the archives, potentially requiring new research practices. 

The talks will examine the interactions between users and historical and digital archives from different disciplinary perspectives, particularly with regard to new methods of AI-supported research and representation.