Öffentliche Vorlesung
Veranstaltet im Rahmen der Europäischen Sommeruniversität in Digitalen Geisteswissenschaften „Kulturen & Technologien“
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Models and modelling as explicit exploratory and empirical strategies of inquiry have been increasingly recognised and adopted in science and scholarship, and the role of models in exploring rather than measuring, predicting or explaining is being reconsidered. Modelling in Digital Humanities (DH) has been at the intersection of several long term areas of inquiry in the humanities and cultural studies, including debates and theorisations around the meaning and mechanics of representation, abstraction, signification, fictionality, translation, and learning. In DH modelling is considered one of the core research practices, and explicit models are extensively required in order to operationalise research questions, this includes representation of objects of study in the form of data to process, in order to make objects and observations computable, as well as to analyse, transform and visualise data.
The epistemological impact of information technology and software engineering in research, calls for a shift from models as static objects to the dynamic process of modelling. Underlying the discussion are a number of philosophical and epistemological questions, including for example the understanding of the relationship between knowledge and information modelling in a way compatible with the methods of cultural-historical studies adequately reflected in the machine-supported information.
The rapid co-evolution of technology and learning is offering new ways to represent and model knowledge. I therefore present some examples from the history of philosophy and from some DH projects in order to discuss how metaphors themselves are models of knowledge and define the schemata within which knowledge and specific concepts operate. I propose to consider modelling as a creative and highly pragmatic process in which metaphors assume a central role and act as conceptual design where meaning is negotiated through the creation and manipulation of external representations combined with a figurative use of languages.
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Director of research at the Institute for European Intellectual Lexicon and History of Ideas (ILIESI) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), she couples her research in philosophy, philosophy of language and digital humanities with activities to enhance the interdisciplinary dialogue through the exploration of different languages and technologies that favor the sharing of research methods, practices and results. She is currently scientific advisor for ILIESI of the project Cultural Heritage: managing the planning (Programma Operativo Nazionale); she was co-PI of the project Modeling between Digital and Humanities: Thinking in Practice (Volkswagen Stiftung), and participating in the Parthenos. Pooling Activities, Resources and Tools for Heritage E- research Networking, Optimization and Synergies (Horizon 2020). She was member of the governing board and WP leader in the project Agora.Scholarly Open Access Research in European Philosophy (CIP-Pilot Action).
From 2010-2011 she has been Science Officer at the European Science Foundation in Strasbourg for peer review and quality of research. She teaches “Digital Humanities for Philosophy” at Sapienza Università in Rome, and is a member of the editorial staff of “Umanistica Digitale”, from 2014 to 2017 member of the Associazione Italiana per l’Umanistica e la Cultura Digitale (AIUCD) board. Among her recent publications: she is co-editor with F. Ciracì, Riccardo Fedriga, of Filosofia Digitale (Mimesis 2021); with G. Franzini, E. Litta, M. Passarotti of La svolta inevitabile: sfide e prospettive per l’Informatica Umanistica. Atti del IX Convegno Annuale AIUCD (UD, 2020); with A. Ciula, O. Eide, P. Shale Models and Modelling between Digital and Humanities. A Multidisciplinary Perspective, in “Historical Social Research Supplement”, 31, 2018. She is author of: “Biodiversità ed ecosistema digitale. Per una filosofia plurilingue e multiprospettica” in Filosofia Digitale (Mimesis, 2021); “Migrazioni di tecnologie e linguaggi. Il plurilinguismo del progetto Andata e Ritorno (A/R): dalle parole alla materia” (CNR edizioni, 2019); “Sprachwissenschaft” in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Rezeption, Forschung, Ausblick (Franz Steiner Verlag, 2019).
Web: http://www.iliesi.cnr.it/Marras
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