Professor Jane Ohlmeyer

https://voicesproject.ie/

Big data and machine learning are transforming our experience of social interaction, identity, governance, entertainment, journalism, privacy, and, through artificial intelligence (AI), what it means to be human. There are increasing calls for human-centric approaches to critical questions concerning this rapid expansion of adaptive technologies and their impact on the nature and future of humanity. Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, will address this need through the EU-funded HUMAN+, a Marie Curie Sklodowska Actions cofunding from 2020-25, which will connect computer science researchers with arts and humanities researchers and enterprise to forge a human-centric approach to technological development. HUMAN+ will recruit 18 experienced researchers over 2 calls, each for a duration of two years. Through multidisciplinary supervision, industry participation by way of workshops and mandatory secondments, HUMAN+fellows will gain inter-sectoral experience contributing to their capacity to tackle societal challenges relating to the areasoutlined above. Non-academic partners involved in the programme include Nokia Bell Labs, Accenture Human Insight Lab,EPIC- the Irish Emigration Museum, Fidelity and Ancestry.com. The application was ranked second in Europe.

SHAPE-ID is an EU-funded project addressing the challenge of improving inter- and transdisciplinary cooperation between the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) and other Sciences, particularly Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The project will establish a comprehensive knowledge base covering the different understandings of inter- and transdisciplinary research (IDR), the factors that inhibit or support it and a set of success criteria for meaningful AHSS integration within IDR for approaching key societal challenges. Through a literature review, survey and a series of learning case workshops, the project will gather evidence from the experience of IDR stakeholders. SHAPE-ID will ultimately deliver a toolkit and recommendations, including a policy brief, to guide European policy makers, funders, Universities and researchers in achieving successful pathways to interdisciplinary integration between AHSS and other Sciences, as well as within AHSS disciplines.

In 2018, members of the SPeCTReSS project network secured competitive funding for a $180,000 Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes (CHCI) and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to develop a Global Humanities Institute on the subject of democracy and trauma. The GHI was led by Prof Jane Ohlmeyer and Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute in collaboration with four international partner institutes in Brazil, Croatia, India and USA. The Crises of Democracy GHI brought together a group of 40 interdisciplinary arts and humanities researchers in various career stages to explore crises of democracy through the lens of cultural trauma. The Crises of Democracy GHI designed three immersive research programmes across the 18-month project timeline. On these programmes, researchers from the consortium explored the subject of democracy in the open and reflective environment of the GHI. A significant aspect of the GHI was a mentorship scheme which paired the early career researchers with senior researchers. This scheme allowed the GHI to develop a strong network of scholars working in the area of democracy, covering all career stages. The Crises of Democracy GHI consortium arranged immersive research exchange programmes in Ireland (4 days), Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina (9 days), and Brazil (10 days). Each GHI meeting included site visits to local NGOs , CSOs, and arts organisations. The visits were arranged under the guidance of local and regional experts. These experiential visits allowed participants to go beyond reading and hearing about case studies and initiatives, to see, hear, and interact with landscapes, projects, and populations first-hand. From the GHI programmes over the 18-months, the consortium produced an open curriculum on crises of democracy. With contributions and areas of focus that represent an extensive geographic breadth, the Crises of Democracy Curriculum presents a comparative global perspective of our present democratic conditions. The living curriculum provides rich material which will be of interest to specialists and non-specialists alike. Since December 2019, the curriculum has been downloaded across the world and has been used as a primary resource for a course on 'Transatlantic Crises of Democracies: Cultural Approaches' at the University of São Paulo.

Building upon the legacy of the the 1641 Depositions at Trinity College Dublin, the 'Conflict Welfare and Memory' project reveals the human costs of the Civil Wars by investigating how wounded soldiers, war widows and other bereaved family members petitioned for financial relief. In the petition documents, we hear the voices of the ordinary men and women who lived and fought during the English Civil Wars. These people tell us how they looked back on their experiences during the Wars and how they coped with its aftermath. We can learn about what sort of medical care was made available to injured soldiers, and the ingenious ways that the wounded and bereaved negotiated with the authorities for financial relief. We can also discover how those who managed welfare systems responded to the enormous strains of supporting thousands of soldiers and civilians, as well as the relationship between the provision of relief, political considerations and the contested memories of conflict. The project website provides free and searchable public access to photographs and transcriptions of petitions and medical certificates seeking military welfare payments as a consequence of suffering, bereavement or loss during the English Civil Wars. It also provides free and searchable public access to lists of payments to pensioners and those in receipt of military welfare payments as a result of suffering, bereavement or loss during the English Civil Wars. I work as a mentor for the Project.