Shared Horizons solicits applications to attend this two-day National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Symposium
Date: Wednesday, April 10- Friday, April 12, 2013
Location: University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland USA

Applications Due: December 15, 2012 (please note revised deadline)
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The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), working in cooperation with the Office of Digital Humanities of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes for Health, and the Research Councils UK, will host a two-day symposium to: (1) address questions about collaboration, research methodologies, and the interpretation of evidence arising from the interdisciplinary opportunities in this burgeoning area of biomedical-driven humanities scholarship; (2) to investigate the current state of the field; and (3) to facilitate future research collaborations between the humanities and biomedical sciences.

Awarded via a National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman’s Cooperative Agreement, Shared Horizons: Data, BioMedicine, and the Digital Humanities will explore collaboration, research methodologies, and the interpretation of evidence arising from the interdisciplinary opportunities in this burgeoning area of biomedical-driven humanities scholarship.

Shared Horizons will create opportunities for disciplinary cross-fertilization through a mix of formal and informal presentations combined with breakout sessions, all designed to promote a rich exchange of ideas about how large-scale quantitative methods can lead to new understandings of human culture. Bringing together researchers from the digital humanities and bioinformatics communities, the symposium will  explore ways in which these two communities might fruitfully collaborate on projects that bridge the humanities and medicine around the topics of sequence alignment and network analysis, two modes of analysis that intersect with “big data.”

The organizers encourage applications from faculty, staff, and graduate students in the humanities and biomedicine fields, as well as other academics and the general public with a serious interest in sequence alignment, network analysis, and “big data”. Applicants would commit to the submission of a paper for inclusion in the Shared Horizons Resources section in addition to a 15 minute presentation related to their paper on one of these modes of analysis within your research.

Applications to attend the Shared Horizons Symposium will be accepted from November 1-December 15, 2012. Applications should include an statement of research interests in these areas, a 500-1000 word abstract for their paper/presentation, and a current curriculum vitae. Selected papers would be distributed to symposium attendees prior to the event as well as posted online. Applicants should be current residents of the U.S.

Participants will be selected by the Advisory Board in consultation with the Shared Horizons Staff and Sponsors based on the following criteria with each area being weighted equally.

1) scholarly engagement with sequence alignment and/or network analysis

2) quality of proposed paper

3) collaborative potential

Notification of selection will be made by February 1, 2013.