Intersectionalized Professional Identities and Gender in the Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries

Abstract

Digital Humanities (DH) has emerged as a new academic employment field in the past 20 years or so. Its place within the academy remains contested, differently realized and materialized in different socio-cultural contexts. It conjoins domains conventionally female-dominated (Humanities disciplines) with technology domains that have been regarded as male-dominated. Yet while there has been much research on women within technology-driven work environments in general, there has been no research on DH as an emerging employment context, or on the impacts of gender in its formation both as workplace and as a site for professional identities. This article draws on qualitative research conducted in 2017/18. It examines how gender, DH as a materialized workplace, and professional identities within it, are imbricated in a field characterized by ‘intersectionalized identities’. These ‘intersectionalized identities’ have particular effects, producing ‘vacated spaces’ as metaphorical and as material gaps.