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In academic contexts, digital games are often studied as texts or are used as pedagogical tools to teach basic concepts in early education situations. Less usefully, their systems and economies are often co-opted and decontextualized in short-sighted attempts to "gamify" various aspects of learning or training. However, given that games are highly controlled, conditional, choice-and-consequence-based, problem-solving environments in which players are expected to interact with simulated settings and elements after agreeing to take on particular roles and subject positions, there are promising potential uses of these experiences in academic contexts that have not been fully considered. Motivated by the imperative to explore alternative modes and methods of scholarly research and communication, and guided by the values of open social scholarship practices, this paper reconsiders games not as things to study, but as instruments to study with. Given that games can function as simulations, models, arguments and creative collaboratories, game-based inquiry can be used as a potential method of post-secondary and post-graduate humanities research and scholarly communication. While these ideas have been explored in a preliminary way in relation to a number of different academic disciplines (Donchin 1995; Boot 2015; Mitgutsch and Weise 2011; Westecott 2011) this paper is meant to catalyse a humanities-calibrated consideration of the pragmatics and potentials of game-based research, games as instances of critical making and scholarly communication, and more complex forms of game-based learning than those currently practiced. A number of examples that make use of the open source Twine platform will be featured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Digital Humanities in Spanish and Portuguese. A case study: DíaHD/DiaHD In the international Digital Humanities arena there is an important debate centred on the ways that the structures and the academic and institutional dynamics of the Digital Humanities favour scholars from English-speaking countries to the detriment of academics from other parts of the world. One of the current challenges is the identification of digital humanists working in countries and languages beyond the English-speaking world. In this context, an event entitled Día de las humanidades digitales/Dia das humanidades digitais took place on the 10 June 2013. An event organised and promoted by groups and institutions that make up an international working group seeking to document the discourses, practices and methodologies that are developing in the Digital Humanities in Spanish and Portuguese. This paper seeks to investigate whether the discourses and practices within the Digital Humanities in these languages have features that distinguish them from those of the English-speaking world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

e-Research and Cyberinfrastructure programmes actively promote the development of new forms of scientific practice and collaboration through the implementation of tools and technologies that support distributed collaborative work across geographically dispersed research institutes and laboratories. Whilst originating in scientific domains, we have more recently seen a turn to the design of systems that support research practices in the social sciences and the arts and humanities. Attempts to embed large-scale infrastructures into research settings has brought to the fore the necessity of understanding the knowledge, skills and practices of researchers within a variety of disciplines that might use these technologies. In this paper, we consider an approach to gathering requirements through the introduction of various technical interventions for relatively short term periods so that we may come to an understanding their impact on routine work practices. Drawing upon an analysis of the detailed ways in which classicists work with digital images, we discuss the requirements for systems that support them as they collaborate in the interpretation of particular types of images. We discuss implications for the development of infrastructures to support research collaboration in this area and conclude with reflections upon the experiences gained from conducting naturalistic studies in parallel with design interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]