WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Scholars have documented a range of challenges to successful collaboration, whether stemming from the mode of collaboration, differences in disciplinary perspectives and goals, or the need to establish common ground and find effective modes of communication. In this workshop, we will consider how collaborative interpretation unfolds in different settings and within the research process, and ask questions including:

• Who is performing interpretation?
• What is being interpreted?
• What are the goals of interpretation?
• How is the interpretation being performed?
• What are the analytical lenses?
• Can different actors incorporate the fruits of collaboration into their own research to forward different goals?

We may also work with and interpret a range of artifacts. How can we interact with these artifacts, and how does their nature (material, symbolic, institutional) affect our interpretation? What can we learn about an artifact based on other resources?

Introduction and challenges: Workshop participants present 5 minute lightning talks introducing an important challenge problem they see in collaboration and their perspective on how to address it. All workshop participants engage in interactive breakout discussions.

Collaborative interpretation activity: Participants engage in a collaborative interpretation of text from a corpus of personal diaries from 19th century Ottoman Iraq. The diaries are available at https://www.svobodadiariesproject.org/, but we will provide additional guidance, materials, and a platform to engage in collective interpretation, with flexibility to shape the interpretive process based on workshop participants’ own research approaches. Participate prior to the workshop if you want, and perhaps receive a free scholarship to attend!

Poster session: Participants will present posters introducing collaborative interpretation projects that they would like to do or are currently engaged in.

Collaborative brainstorming to develop infrastructures for collaborative interpretation: Workshop attendees will form small groups and brainstorm how they might develop/build an infrastructure for collaborative interpretation. Though we expect that the discussions will naturally emanate from the prior activities, we will also provide suggested approaches to brainstorming.

We will provide guidelines for public archiving of papers and posters prior to the workshop, to facilitate accessibility beyond the lifetime of the workshop.