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Dr. Daniel Paul O’Donnell, Professor in the Department of English and Director of the Humanities Innovation Lab, has been awarded a $300,000 Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). 

His four-year project, Resistance to Data: Understanding Data Use, Data Management, and Data Infrastructure in the “Traditional” Humanities through Historical, Comparative, and Ethnographic Study, will explore how humanities scholars engage with research materials often described as “data” and how national data management strategies can better support the field. The project is an extension of his previous SSHRC-funded community, Humanities Data Inquiry ().

The award was announced as part of SSHRC’s national Insight Grant competition, which provided more than $3 million in funding to ��Ѹ�����Դ���߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers across disciplines. The full story of the institutional awards can be found on the U of L News site.

Understanding the Humanities and Data

Across the sciences and social sciences, open data policies and improved data management practices have transformed research in recent decades. In contrast, humanities scholars outside of areas such as the Digital Humanities or work in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) have been slower to adopt these approaches. Many remain skeptical of “datification,” questioning its relevance to their work.

O’Donnell’s project addresses this gap. Rather than assuming humanists must conform to existing digital systems, Resistance to Data asks how policies and infrastructures can be adapted to fit the ways humanists already collect, interpret, and share their materials.

“Humanities researchers have always worked with sources that information professionals might describe as data,” O’Donnell explains. “But humanists often understand these materials differently. Our goal is to study these practices on their own terms and identify how contemporary systems can be built to support them.”

Building on Earlier Research

The project builds on insights from Good Things Come in Small Packages, an earlier SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (2021–2024) led by O’Donnell and collaborators. That initiative set out to develop a community of practice around humanities data and established the Humanities Data Inquiry community, but it quickly became clear that basic questions about what counts as “data” in the humanities remained unresolved.

With the Insight Grant, O’Donnell and his team will combine ethnographic interviews, comparative case studies, and historical research to investigate these questions more deeply. Interviews with more than 150 humanities scholars will document how researchers in disciplines ranging from literature and history to archaeology and art history define and use research materials. Historical case studies will trace how editions, facsimiles, and archives—cornerstones of humanities research—function as early forms of data infrastructure.

Training Students and Researchers

A major focus of the grant is the training of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Approximately 92% of the project’s budget will be dedicated to supporting highly qualified personnel (HQP). Master’s and doctoral students will gain hands-on experience with archival research, data analysis, and scholarly communication while contributing directly to the project’s publications and presentations.

“The humanities are evolving, and our students need to be part of that transformation. This funding allows us to prepare them for careers that bridge traditional scholarship and digital research practices.”

Students involved in the project will also benefit from professional opportunities through the Lethbridge Journal Incubator, a unique training initiative of the Humanities Innovation Lab and the School of Graduate Studies that provides direct experience in scholarly publishing.

A Collaborative Team

The project will be based in the Humanities Innovation Lab at the ��Ѹ�����Դ���߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge. O’Donnell will lead the research in collaboration with Dr. Barbara Bordalejo, an adjunct member of the Department of English, who has also led the internationally renowned Canterbury Tales Project. Together, they bring decades of experience leading national and international research teams in digital humanities and scholarly communication.

The project also benefits from international connections, with collaborators in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, ensuring that its findings will reach global audiences. Knowledge mobilization plans include conference presentations, scholarly publications, and practitioner workshops aimed at librarians, archivists, and policymakers as well as humanities scholars.

Broader Impact

By examining humanities research practices through historical, comparative, and ethnographic lenses, Resistance to Data will provide valuable insight into how data management systems can better support a wide range of researchers. The project’s findings will help policymakers and infrastructure developers understand the needs of humanities disciplines while also giving scholars themselves tools to engage with digital resources more effectively.

“Too often, discussions about research infrastructure assume that the humanities must simply catch up with the sciences,” O’Donnell notes. “We are arguing instead that the humanities have long traditions of working with data-like materials. By recognizing this, we can design systems that serve everyone more effectively.”

For the ��Ѹ�����Դ���߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, the award is both recognition of the institution’s growing research profile and a testament to the continued relevance of the humanities in an increasingly digital world.