A Project Funded by the SSHRC Major Collaborative Research Initiatives Program

The Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) project has been described, in brief, as an interdisciplinary initiative spawned in the methodological commons of the digital humanities that seeks to understand the future of reading through reading’s past and to explore the future of the book from the perspective of its history. Learn more. For this essential work, INKE brings together researchers and stakeholders at the forefront of computing in the humanities, text analysis, information studies, usability and interface design into a network comprised of those who are best-poised to understand the nature of the human record as it intersects with the computer, with its work divided at present into three key research groupings: textual studies, modelling and prototyping, and interface design.

INKE began in 2004-5 as HCI-Book: Human-Computer Interface and the Electronic Book (http://www.hci-book.org/cluster/), a Strategic Research Cluster supported by SSHRC shortly thereafter. INKE is directed by Ray Siemens (U Victoria) and its work in 2012-13 is led by Siemens, Richard Cunningham (Acadia U), Stan Ruecker (IIT Institute of Design), Lynne Siemens (U Victoria), Jon Bath (U Saskatchewan), and Jon Saklofske (Acadia U); past leaders have also included Teresa Dobson (U British Columbia), Alan Galey (U Toronto), and Claire Warwick (University College, London). The project is funded by a $2.5 million, 7-year Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI) grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), plus an additional $10.4 million in contributions from institutional and research partners. The international INKE Research Group consists of 35 researchers across 20 institutions and 21 partner agencies, with work involving some 19 postdoctoral research fellows and 53 graduate research assistants over the life of the project.

For more about the INKE project, please contact:

Ray Siemens (siemens@uvic.ca)
Distinguished Professor and Canada Research Chair
Departments of English and Computer Science
Electronic Textual Cultures Lab
University of Victoria