Acknowledgments

This collection began as a result of my time at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, where I spent a year as a postdoctoral research fellow and, despite shipping my entire library of English Renaissance literary studies in the expectation (perhaps naïve) of teaching it, found myself tasked with designing and teaching undergraduate courses in digital humanities.

Thankfully, support and guidance was always close to hand. In particular, the “Three Musketeers” of the Humanities Computing and Media Centre—Greg Newton, Stewart Arneil and Martin Holmes—fielded my many questions with good humor and shaped my understanding and appreciation of the subject. Michael Best’s expertise is matched only by his generosity, and I am eternally grateful for his ongoing mentorship and friendship. Michael Joyce, Cara Leitch, Tassie Gniady, Kim S. Webb, Meagan Timney, Paul Caton and other past members of the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab were always willing to share their ideas, assistance and commiserations. Other members of the Faculty of Humanities, Elizabeth Grove-White, Janelle Jenstad, Erin Kelly, Gary Kuchar and Jon Lutz were equally welcoming and supportive.

My time in North America afforded me additional valuable opportunities to discuss ideas with digital humanists from further afield, such as Richard Cunningham, Alan Galey, Ian Lancashire, Alan Liu, Kenneth Price, Geoffrey Rockwell, Stan Ruecker, Stéfan Sinclair and Kirsten Uszkalo. Back in the Antipodes, conversations with Toby Burrows, Hugh Craig, Willard McCarty, Jo McEwan, Jenna Mead, Philip Mead, Harold Short, Margaret Stevenson and Chris Wortham have been instructive. A Research Development Award from the University of Western Australia generously supported my own humble contributions to this collection.

Open Book Publishers has been a pleasure to work with, and I thank Alessandra Tosi, Corin Throsby and Samuel Moore for enthusiastically guiding this volume into its print and electronic manifestations. We are delighted to be a part of this exciting publishing venture, and fully support its vision.

I am also grateful to Daniel Rohr, a talented product designer based in Darmstadt, Germany, for generously allowing me to use a photograph of his stunning Brain and Microchip project for the volume’s cover.

We have all heard the joke that bringing together academics to produce a collection such as this is like herding cats. Thankfully, I could not have hoped for a better lineup of contributors—practical, principled and political. No cats were herded in the making of this volume.

B.D.H.

Perth, July 15, 2012