Evelyn Gius

Abstract

What does it mean to measure in the (digital) humanities? Using literary studies as a point of departure, this keynote addresses the conceptual and practical challenges of measurement in the humanities, interrogating two common assumptions: that measurement must necessarily involve quantification, and that such processes are inherently incapable of capturing the richness and complexity of literary texts. While these assumptions reflect valid concerns, they often stem from a limited understanding of what measurement actually entails. Drawing on the example of temperature measurement as a conceptual framework, I will examine the challenges that measurement practices face within the digital humanities. Rather than rejecting measurement as reductive or accepting it uncritically, this talk advocates for a more reflective and responsible engagement—one that also acknowledges the humanist’s role in shaping the procedures by which we measure our objects of study.

Bio

Evelyn Gius is a Professor of Digital Philology and Modern German Literary Studies at the Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies at the Technical University of Darmstadt. She directs the fortext lab, which focuses on research in Digital Humanities, with particular emphasis on Computational Literary Studies and Computational Narratology. Her work centers on manual annotation, narratological analysis, and the segmentation of texts, alongside methodological questions concerning automation and the operationalization of humanities approaches. In addition to her research, she supports the DH community through the collaborative annotation software CATMA and the fortext.net portal, which offers accessible introductions to Digital Humanities methods and tools, and serves as Chair of the Association for Digital Humanities in the German-Speaking Area (DHd) and editor of the diamond open-access publications Journal of Computational Literary Studies (JCLS) and forTEXT Hefte.