Everything Is Awful, But Maybe We Can Change Things: Digital Humanities in Times of Crisis

The 2025 King’s Public Lecture in Digital Humanities delivered by Professor Roopika Risam, Dartmouth College.

While most certainly precedented, we are living in precarious times. Institutions are failing us, politicians are playing chess with our lives, corporations are wielding immense power over governments. What a time to be alive. This talk is not going to solve any of those problems or claim that digital humanities is somehow the answer. (If only!) But, Risam will discuss how she, along with colleagues, have drawn on digital humanities methods to respond to political, social, and economic crises with projects like Torn Apart/Separados, The Nimble Tents Toolkit, and Text Mining the University, among others. In doing so, she will offer a framework for thinking about digital humanities as an active agent for change and a source of hope in challenging times.

Event schedule 

17.30 – Welcoming remarks by Professor Simon Tanner, Interim Executive Dean

17.40 – 18.30 Lecture by Professor Roopika Risam, + Q&A

19.00 – Drinks reception in the Anatomy Museum

Speaker info

Roopika Risam is Associate Professor of Digital Humanities and Social Engagement at Dartmouth. Her research focuses on data histories, ethics, and practices at intersections of postcolonial and African diaspora studies, digital humanities, and critical university studies. Risam is the author of New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy, and co-editor of multiple volumes, most recently Anti-Racist Community Engagement (2023) and The Digital Black Atlantic (2021). She is the director of the Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium and founding co-editor of Reviews in Digital Humanities, and she recently served as co-president of the Association for Computers and the Humanities. Risam is finishing her second book, Insurgent Academics: A Radical Account of Public Humanities (Johns Hopkins University Press), and she is working on a trade book on data and empire. She recently received the 2023 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award from the International Association for Research in Service Learning and Community Engagement.

This event is organised by the King's College London Department of Digital Humanities, the Centre for Digital Culture and the Digital Futures Institute.

To attend the lecture, please ensure you have registered. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception in the Anatomy Museum. 

This event will be livestreamed. Participants should register to receive the link to the livestream.