Power Asymmetries poster.pdf (14.44 MB)
Power Asymmetries of eHumanities Infrastructures
Poster presented at eScience conference 2018, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (30 October-1 November 2017). Poster design by Lindi Melse and Max Kemman.
Abstract—Digital research infrastructures simultaneously enable and confine the research practices of scholars, constituting a power relation. This power relation can be characterised as a power asymmetry, with scholars dependent on the developers of infrastructures. In order to reduce this power asymmetry, infrastructures are developed in collaboration between scholars and computational researchers. Through an analysis of 28 interviews of eScience projects in digital history I have investigated whether collaborations succeed in reducing power asymmetry. In this paper I will explore knowledge asymmetry, the ignorance of how a collaborator performs their tasks, and how this reinforces power asymmetry. I will moreover consider how these asymmetries pose a challenge in the development and adoption of research infrastructures in the humanities.
