Bug or feature? is an annual two-day symposium organised by a group of scholars working within the broader field of Digital Humanities. Our committee members work on a variety of projects in different branches of archaeology and philology and are currently located at universities in Germany, Switzerland and Norway. The symposium was created out of a desire for a platform allowing us to freely discuss experiences with the different technologies used in our respective areas, including issues we ran into while working on our own projects.
We chose “Bug or Feature?” as the name for our symposium because, while new technologies offer new approaches to research, the limits of each technology can also stop research in its track, particularly when the wrong tool was chosen. With the broad variety of different tools designed for research out there, however, it is often difficult to choose the right tool for the kind of research one wants to conduct, not to mention issues of data reusability, sustainability and other FAIR principles.
At the annual Bug or Feature?, these are precisely the issues we aim to discuss. We encourage people to bring their own problems, unfinished projects, software frustrations and ideas for future projects to the table, creating a network to support the individual scholar in making good (software and data modelling) choices.
The 2023 iteration is the fourth time we organise this symposium (fifth if counting the time before the name). It will be a hybrid event taking place between November 7th to 9th in Oslo, Norway. More information can be found in the Call for Papers and the registration form.
In case of questions, contact the committee at our email!
Margareth Warburton