Hi there,
I'm here at the Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts 2009 Conference in Belfast (http://www.dho.ie/drha2009/). I was listening earlier today to someone talking about the way that Digital Humanities centres try to find funding and was struck be some of the similarities (and differences) between the way these and centres for medieval studies (and similar) are often organised.
When I did my PhD at Leeds many years ago it was still a 'centre' for medieval studies -- it has since become an 'institute' but I think model is probably still fairly similar (someone do correct me if I'm wrong). In this case there are some central medieval studies staff, but the medievalists in the rest of the humanities departments contribute to this centre (whether by dept. funding or more likely teaching part of an MA course, etc.). But overall the model is on of cooperation and collaboration in which a majority of the faculty of the centre for medieval studies may be primarily employed in one or other humanities departments. But there are, of course, other models. Sometimes a CMS is set up with a large number of dedicated staff who are not part of other humanities departments, sometimes the 'centre' is entirely virtual with the courses primarily located and part of degrees in those humanities departments, but open to 'medieval studies' students, or sometimes there are some CMS staff but these work in conjunction with faculty from other departments to provide the breadth required.
I didn't know whether that actually reflected how most CMSes (and CMRSes, and similar centres and departments) were organised. So I wondered if people might be willing to fill out a quick straw poll (open only until Wednesday evening) to describe their Centre for Medieval Studies (or similar). Please do fill it out even if you aren't involved with the CMS, but know how it works:
http://www.doodle.com/krz8w8ykya6icp35
For 'Your Name' in the poll feel free just to put the name of the institution. It is just meant to be a quick straw poll, hardly a deeply scientific sample.
The reason I'm asking is that I think Digital Humanities could probably learn a thing or two in this area from Medieval Studies when it comes to organising departments to provide some of their teaching and staff. How to go about convincing departments to also let some of their staff to officially do a small bit of digital humanities teaching is another question!
Thanks for your help!
Dr James Cummings Director, Digital Medievalist