Big Data Studies LabThe Humanities at Infrastructural Scale
Status
Active
Dates
2019–
Research areas
Material Infrastructures
Methods
Documentary Research
Field Research

Project

What Computing Takes

What Computing Takes follows the material demands of large-scale computing from electricity, water, and data centres to semiconductors, critical minerals, and global supply chains.

The project examines what the expansion of data and AI infrastructure requires of the places and communities that sustain it, including changes in resource use, industry, and local infrastructure. Following these dependencies across supply chains also connects seemingly local developments to resource security, industrial policy, and geopolitics.

Publications and Outputs

  • 2026

    Automating the Past: Artificial Intelligence and the Next Frontiers of Digital History

    Cha, Javier · International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 20, no. 1 (2026): 1–17

  • 2025

    Digital Humanities and the Energetics of Big Data

    Cha, Javier and Ian M. Miller · In Debates in the Digital Humanities, ed. Alan Liu, Urszula Pawlicka-Deger and James Smithies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press · Forthcoming, accepted

  • 2023

    Big Data Studies: The Humanities in Uncharted Waters

    Cha, Javier · Korean Studies 47: 274–299

  • 2020

    Pik teit'ŏ wa inmunhak ŭi mirae [Big data and the future of humanities]

    Cha, Javier · Munmyŏng kwa kyŏnggye 3: 43–77

People

  • 2019–

    Javier Cha

    Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Hong Kong

  • 2021–22

    Ezrah Huong

    University of Copenhagen

  • 2021–22

    Maximilian Rix

    University of Copenhagen

  • 2021–22

    Nadja Nielsen

    University of Copenhagen

  • 2019–20

    Eugene Jang

    PhD candidate, Annenberg School for Communication, USC