14th June 2024 · By the Conference Team · 7 min read

Tagged: Digital Humanities, Material Culture

The digital revolution has transformed nearly every area of academic research, and Victorian studies is no exception. Resources such as The Victorian Web, which has been providing freely accessible scholarly material on the Victorian period for over two decades, exemplify the possibilities that digital platforms offer for the study and dissemination of nineteenth-century culture. As tools and technologies continue to evolve, scholars are finding new ways to examine, interpret, and share the material heritage of the Victorian age.

When the BAVS 2016 conference convened at Cardiff to discuss "Consuming (the) Victorians," the digital humanities were already beginning to reshape the field. Conference materials, including the programme booklet and abstracts, were made available digitally alongside printed copies, as described on the press and media page. In the years since, the pace of change has accelerated considerably. Large-scale digitisation projects, computational text analysis, 3D scanning of objects, and virtual reality reconstructions of historical spaces have all expanded the methods available to researchers working on Victorian material culture.

Digitisation and Access

Perhaps the most immediate impact of digital technology on Victorian studies has been the dramatic expansion of access to primary sources. National libraries, archives, and museums across the United Kingdom and beyond have undertaken extensive digitisation programmes, making manuscripts, printed texts, photographs, maps, and objects available online to researchers who might never have been able to visit the physical collections.

For scholars of consumer culture, these digital collections are invaluable. Trade catalogues, advertisements, fashion plates, and retail ephemera that were once scattered across numerous archives can now be accessed, compared, and analysed with far greater ease. The ability to search across large digital corpora has also revealed connections and patterns that would have been extremely difficult to identify through traditional methods of research.

Computational Approaches

Computational methods, sometimes grouped under the umbrella of "distant reading," have opened new avenues for understanding Victorian print culture. By applying text-mining and natural language processing techniques to large collections of nineteenth-century periodicals, novels, and other printed matter, scholars have been able to track changes in vocabulary, sentiment, and thematic emphasis over time. These methods are particularly well suited to the study of consumer culture, where the language of advertising, product description, and consumer commentary can be analysed at scale.

At the same time, scholars have been careful to note the limitations of computational approaches. The quality of optical character recognition (OCR) on Victorian printed texts remains variable, and the selection of texts that have been digitised does not always represent the full diversity of the period's print output. The most productive digital scholarship tends to combine computational methods with close reading and contextual analysis, using the strengths of each approach to compensate for the weaknesses of the other.

3D Scanning and Virtual Reconstruction

For scholars of material culture, one of the most exciting developments has been the application of 3D scanning and modelling to Victorian objects and spaces. Museums and heritage organisations have begun to create detailed digital models of furniture, decorative arts, scientific instruments, and architectural interiors, making it possible to examine these objects in ways that are not always feasible with the originals.

The Victorian interiors of Cardiff Castle, which provided such a striking backdrop for the BAVS 2016 conference, are an ideal candidate for this kind of digital documentation. The intricate carved stonework, painted surfaces, and gilded decoration designed by William Burges could be captured in three dimensions, allowing scholars and members of the public to explore these spaces remotely and to study their details at a level of magnification that is not possible during an ordinary visit.

Challenges and Opportunities

While the digital transformation of Victorian studies brings many benefits, it also raises important questions about sustainability, equity, and intellectual integrity. Digital projects require ongoing maintenance and funding, and there is a risk that valuable digital resources may become inaccessible as technologies change and funding streams expire. Questions of copyright, data ownership, and the ethics of digitising material from formerly colonised nations also require careful consideration.

Despite these challenges, the digital age offers enormous opportunities for the study of Victorian material culture. By combining the insights of traditional scholarship with the power of new technologies, researchers can develop richer, more inclusive, and more detailed accounts of how the Victorians produced, consumed, and understood the material world around them.