My name is Menno van Zaanen, I am a professor in Digital Humanities working at the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources.
Digital Humanities, to me, sits in between the fields of Humanities (and Social Sciences) and the Digital. By incorporating digital techniques and resources in the field of Humanities, we have access to new methodologies (in contrast to the more traditional ways of doing research in the fields of Humanities and Social Sciences). I expect that using digital methodologies will become more "normal" in the fields of Humanities and Social Sciences; the field of Digital Humanities will then investigate how these methodologies can be further adapted, or how new methodologies can be developed. This in no way means that more traditional approaches to research are less valid. The focus of these methodologies is different.
I'm involved in a few organizations:
President of the Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (DHASA)
Member of the Constituent Organizations Board (COB) of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO)
Member of the European Chapter of the Association of Computational Linguistics (EACL) advisory board
Member of the CODATA-RDA South Africa advisory board
Member of the Routledge Open Research editorial advisory board
Editor in Chief of the Journal of the Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (JDHASA)
Member of the editorial board of the Journal of Open Humanities Data (JOHD)
Member of the editorial board of the Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands Journal (CLINJ)
ADHO Trusted individual (2024-2025)
Contact details:
Email (work): menno.vanzaanen [AT] nwu [DOT] ac [DOT] za
Email (personal): menno [AT] abstractcow [DOT] com
LinkedIn: mennovz
Google Scholar: Menno van Zaanen
ORCiD: 0000-0003-1841-2444
Mastodon: @mvzaanen@mas.to
GitHub: mvzaanen
Postal address: SADiLaR, Internal Box 340, Private bag X6001, Potchefstroom, South Africa 2520
Physical address: Buildings F16 C & F16 D, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, Potchefstroom, South Africa