About Us

Humanities Technology (HumTech) is the technology partner for faculty, staff and students in the Humanities Division at UCLA. From email to 3D modeling; from quick advice to programming and development, our focus is on improving humanities instruction and research. We are here to partner on digital projects and offer technical expertise and solutions. We are also an important node in the digital humanities community at UCLA.

A technical ‘force multiplier’ for Humanities education and academic life.

Every day at HumTech we leverage technology to do these things with and for the humanities:

  • Explore, research, and test technologies and digital methods;
  • Inform, guide, teach and consult with humanities faculty, students and staff about technology;
  • Connect humanities faculty, students and staff with expertise and resources;
  • Provide technical expertise, support and infrastructure;
  • Develop and innovate with technology to improve humanities education and work.

Our name

In October 2018 we changed our name from the “Center for Digital Humanities” to “Humanities Technology (HumTech)”. As stated by Dean of Humanities David Schaberg in his announcement of the change, HumTech “… more accurately reflect[s] this organization’s role as the technology solutions and support center for the Humanities Division.” In short, our charge is to provide technology expertise to the humanities, including but not exclusive to the digital humanities. And still, amidst a thriving cross-campus “DH@UCLA” community, HumTech remains an important node for DH capacity in a distributed network of groups and resources doing digital humanities. (For more information about the name change, see our blog post on “Becoming HumTech”.)

Core values

Our work matters because the Humanities matters. And we are here to ensure that teaching and learning in the humanities is a distinguishing trait of a UCLA education – taking advantage of all that technology and computing have to offer. These are the values by which we define our work at HumTech:

  1. Dependability
  2. Flexibility
  3. Openness
  4. Trustworthiness

Our core values are what we are not willing to compromise in the course of doing our work. These values guide ‘the how’ of HumTech: how we approach our work, and how we choose to respond when faced with choices and challenges.

I didn’t know HumTech did that!

As with anything digital, a lot of what HumTech does is hidden. In addition to problem solving, advice and help, our people and the infrastructure we operate are behind things like hosting the Cuneiform Digital Library, the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, and the Paris, Past & Present digital reconstruction. We also helped design and build much of the Online Italian language courses, the Art History Visual Resources Collection. Together with the UCLA Library, we created the Scholarly Innovation Lab, and host an annual Digital Humanities Infrastructure Symposium. Our staff are or have been President of Bruintech, and moderator of the Language Learning and Technology (LLTI) listserv.