LU Humanities Lab 2024:1
Welcome to LU Humanities lab in 2024!
We welcome January and a brand new year with lots of activities and exiting research in the lab! We would like to take the opportunity to give all users some relevant information about activities in the lab, and also to brag (just a little bit) about fun things we did during the autumn of 2023!
We start off with:
Huminfra Conference (HiC 2024)
Last week almost half of the lab staff went to Gothenburg (and left the rest of us alone to do mischief) for the Huminfra conference HiC 2024! This was the first big conference for the national infrastructure and it focused on showcasing the variety of infrastructural tools, resources and initiatives aimed at supporting digital and experimental research in the Humanities.
This happy bunch is representing Lund University at the Huminfra conference HiC 2024 at the University of Gothenburg. Presentations and demos of infrastructural methods, tools, and materials were interspersed with coffee drinking and happy meetings. All in the name of digital and experimental humanities!
LARM-studio up and running again!
As you might know already, the LARM-studio was flooded by a water leak in October last year. We are happy to announce that it is now up and running as usual, thanks to the efforts by our own super hero Peter Roslund!
If you wish to know more about the LARM-studio, have a look at the facilities pages
Eyetracking news
The eye tracking pages have been expanded with a brand new page with some of the tools we have developed for general use. This includes different interfaces to eye trackers, coding, automatic determination of data quality and so on. Links to GitHub pages as well as published papers can be found on the eye tracking page- enjoy!
Tip of the week/month/year for users:
Are you uncertain of whether the timing in your experiment is accurate? Then you can use the Black Box Toolkit.
Read more on the Black Box Toolkit webpage
What happened in the lab last autumn?
Well, we (and most of all, our brilliant users!) are busy bees. There were lots of interesting projects going on, and new projects started, for example about children with ADHD (Nyström), language in medical records (Smålander), interpretation of corpora (Liu), challenges of communication (Mårtensson), Self-Comprehension Hypothesis In Speech Monitoring (Lind), statistical analyses of experimental data on Japanese sentence intonation (Ishihara), the effect of corrective feedback on grammar in students’ written production (Thomas) and automated information extraction from scientific publications (Aits), to mention but a few. In addition, several podcasts were recorded. Method development is a constant factor in the lab and we work continuously to document the technology, software and methods so it can benefit all users.
In addition to this, our courses and tutorials run as usual and our experts were in high demand. (Because they are excellent.)
Read more about courses and tutorials
And here you can find information about consultations
The lab participated in some cool conferences also! Frida went on a panel on infrastructure and innovation during the EU Days Lund.
Read more about EU-days Lund - Lund muncipality
We also took part in Huminfra’s first webinar, "AI challenges research in the Humanities," with over 100 participants from all over Sweden.
More about the webinar on the news page
Now, as you all should know by know (and if you don't, shame on you!), Lund University had its first Nobel Prize winner, Anne L'Huillier who together with two colleagues received the Nobel prize in Physics. If you would like "nobel prize in physics explained", have a look at this article by J Mauritsson, using an experiment in the anechoic chamber to explain the concept of attosecond pulses.
Read the article in the magazine “Fysikaktuellt”, page 10
Last but not least, we received some funds from the Lund University Research Board for an upgrade of the motion capture system and we are very grateful and excited to start that work!
Two exciting additions in the lab! (That are not very exciting, to be honest)
We now have a cupboard in the storage room where all chemicals that are not currently in use should be. On top of it is a binder where you can find all safety data sheets. If you are one of the people who actually uses chemicals (looking at you, EEG-people!), please put all EMPTY containers on the bottom shelf where the chemical fairy (also known as Maja Petersson) will take care of them. Also, if you are running low on any chemicals, let Stefan Lindgren know well in advance so we can buy some more.
The other not so exciting thing is a brand new-to-us freezer. The freezer, much like the fridge, is NOT for food or beverages. But you all know that, right? It's for lab stuff only. In the case of the freezer, this is where you find the glue needed for experiments in the articulograph.
Upcoming in the lab
Of course you need to know (even) more about statistics! Or maybe programming? Or how to glue stuff to peoples tounges (that would be for articulography)? We have courses and tutorials about all of this and more.
Have a look at our educational pages and decide what you should learn this spring.
Under the Huminfra-umbrella, lots of things is happening all around Sweden. If you wish to know whats happening in the field of digital and experimental research in the Humanities, have a look at the Huminfra News and Events page!
Demos in the lab
If you have a guest or colleague that would like a tour of the facilities, get in touch with get in touch with our deputy director, Frida Splendido. Remember that only Lab staff are allowed to give tours of the Lab.
E-mail Frida at frida.splendidonordlund.luse