2. Mapping Digital Humanities at Western Sydney University

This chapter discusses efforts to build research capacity in Digital Humanities at Western Sydney University. Western Sydney University is a particularly appropriate subject for such a study because it was the site of the first Chair and earliest formally constituted research cluster in its field in Australia. The chapter charts the challenges, triumphs and disappointments of the university’s Digital Humanities Research Group from formation to maturity, as the group has sought to establish financial stability whilst nurturing an emerging and diverse group of digitally empowered projects. In particular, it focuses on how the group’s leadership has leveraged conferencing, training and networking to build trajectory, reputation and velocity, and has strategically targeted seed-corn funding to support emerging Digital Humanities scholars. It also explores how my own award winning and, by the standards of the field, positively venerable, project on the ‘French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe’ has drawn on and developed the expertise and activities of colleagues, stakeholders and external collaborators, to bring training, research and funding opportunities to group members and students, and embed us in an ecosystem of ‘like-minded projects’. In these ways, it is hoped that the Digital Humanities Research Group might be viewed as a living laboratory, and its experience serve as a guide to the perils and opportunities inherent in developing Digital Humanities.