Daejeon, July 27–31
Topic Description & Relevance
#DHMakes is an international, loosely connected effort to thoughtfully engage with vintage and craft-oriented technology, drawing connections to the computational analysis and data visualization work done in DH spaces. As described in Visconti et al. 2024, this movement began on Twitter in 2022, and has recently flourished particularly in Anglophone circles on Bluesky, bridging gaps between academic and non-academic spheres, different academic disciplines, and a wide range of technologies – from letterpress to textile crafts, from Lego to electronics. DHMakes also builds on a longer tradition of “critical making” in art, design, and informatics, a connection explored in Jentery Sayers’s 2017 contribution to the Debates in Digital Humanities series, Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities. This mini-conference will bring together established DHMakes practitioners with scholars new to critical making to share techniques, address challenges—intellectual, technical, and administrative—discuss ongoing projects, and build a larger community of practice across ADHO’s organizations.
Groups organizing themselves under the banner of #DHMakes ran a half-day workshop at DH 2024, as well as virtual maker meet-ups at ACH 2023 and ACH 2025. The organizers of this mini-conference were involved in both of these activities. The organizers come from a range of institutional types and work in a variety of roles, including librarian, faculty, staff, and civic positions. The organizers lead DHMakes initiatives on their home campuses, and have experience running events that are meaningful both for in-person and online participation. In addition, the organizers have all helped plan and run successful “unconferences” such as THATCamps, and so have meaningful experience with the format proposed here.
We propose an event that combines the best of THATCamp inclusivity and spontaneity with the depth of expertise of a MakerFaire. The event will begin and end with a series of lightning talks where participants share how they engage with historical and craft technology in their teaching, research, and personal praxes.
These slots will be available for sign-up for a month before the conference, and will be open to both in-person and virtual participants. Scheduling these sessions at the beginning and/or end will make them accessible across timezones: to the Americas and Europe/Africa, respectively. This will leave the middle of the day for hands-on activities, such as workshops or site visits, that are less suited for hybrid participation. We outline potential workshops below, based on the expressed interests of the organizers, but anticipate soliciting ideas from the broader community as well to finalize the slate. Finally, this mini-conference will facilitate planning towards a future proposal for an ADHO Special Interest Group (SIG) for the DHMakes scholarly community.
The #DHMakes movement calls on participants to consider critical notions of a range of experiences and research modalities. This is process-oriented work that embodies an alternative research methodology to communicate the range of work and invisible labor in digital humanities, while building on craft traditions with a long history of expressive use by marginalized groups (e.g. underground zines, women’s subversive cross-stitch, etc.)
These slots will be available for sign-up for a month before the conference, and will be open to both in-person and virtual participants.
Approximate CFP Date: June 27th, 2026 Approximate Deadline: July 20th, 2026
As noted above, the organizers will solicit workshop proposals from the DHMakes community, such that the workshop reflects the diversity of people and methodologies in the field. As such, these precise topics might shift, but we anticipate the workshop slots involving activities such as: