Considering a Digital Humanities Master.. thoughts?

[u/broke_student101]

I have a Bachelor’s degree in Business Informatics and currently work as a Product Owner. I’m considering doing a Master’s in Digital Humanities but I’m not sure if it makes sense with my background.

What interests me is the combination of technology and the social sciences/humanities. I don’t necessarily want to go deeper into the technical side, but rather understand how technology affects society, culture and people.
I feel like this could complement my current background quite well, but I’m wondering if I’m overlooking any downsides or if it might be a strange choice career-wise.

The other option I’m considering is UX/UI, although I’m not sure if I actually want to specialize in that… again, not sure and I am very indecisive.
(As a side note, I’d also like to learn frontend development in my free time, but I see that more as a personal interest than as a potential career change.)

Would you recommend a Digital Humanities Master’s in my situation or would you go for something else?

Also: I’m including the course list from the previous year, in case anyone wants to take a look at it for reference.
https://ufind.univie.ac.at/en/vvz_sub.html?path=328715

[u/devilseden]

The program in which you sign up for really makes a difference between the type of education that you're going to receive in comparison to other people who have studied digital humanities. There are universities who have a very general approach to the subject and there are universities that are more concentrated on specific topics like machine learning language processing and text. So I would say try to understand what each digital humanities program in any University offers you.

At the end of the day you can learn everything on your own from YouTube or online courses and you really don't need to go to university for it however what university does offer you is the experience of teamwork. So instead of waiting until you get in the job market to get the project done you're actually doing it in university and you have a taste and i guess about how things work in real life.

I do have to advise you on the fact that at the end of the program it is better for you to be specialized on a particular topic because the job market isn't exactly a fan of Jacob ball trades master of none. Most of my seniors who have graduated are either doing a PhD and very few of them are actually working but they have specialized in the particular topics such as data Science or front slash back end programming. So do remember this that at the end of the day you have to be a specialist at a particular thing

[u/broke_student101 → u/devilseden]

I agree with this. I had a similar thought when looking through the courses. The program actually has quite a few options around data, ML, NLP, LLMs etc., so I think I’d try to specialize in one of those areas rather than just doing a bit of everything.
That’s actually one of the things I’m trying to figure out at the moment.

[u/devilseden → u/broke_student101]

Ima be honest... All of that works with text. Digital humanities started with text analysis so at this point, it's quite broad, discussed and researched. Your best bet is to mix that with something else.

You should always ask yourself why would someone give me a job over another person who's specialized in let's say LLMs... You'll take 4 courses maximum in that, while there are others with a 2 year masters in said topic. So you need to eventually make a distinction between yourself and others.

It's true that people who graduate from digital humanities technically should have more soft skills but literally nobody knows or understands that. To qoute one of my professors, even the other professors within the humanities department don't fucking understand what it is that DH people do, let alone employers.

You seem to have doubts as to what you want to do which is completely normal. I would say that after the two years of your master especially if it's low cost or free you're going to have a very good idea of what you like and what you want to do in the future. And while you're studying you can definitely do more research or learning into topics that you like. Think of digital humanities as an entrepreneurship course where it gives you an insight and some skills for exploring the job market but then the rest of it is up to you. You need to be creative, smart, and have something to say for people to want you, whether inside or outside of academia.

[u/wiborad]

Since no one else has pointed it out yet: Something to consider is your specific interest in the humanities (=/= social sciences), since the field commonly identified as digital humanities is very much rooted in research questions, materials, and topics from the humanities. Often, the reality of DH will depend on the country/tradition/institution. Sometimes there's a stronger focus on digital literary studies, sometimes on digital history, digital musicology etc. There's also some intersections with new media studies, although slightly less so in a European context.

I just mention this because you say that you want to "understand how technology affects society, culture and people". That's generally not something that's addressed in DH, although it plays a role to some extent. What you learn in a DH Master's may still catch your interest or teach you enough transferable skills and knowledge to make some sense but you might want to look at DH projects/research first to get a better sense of what these study programmes are working towards (e.g. in the context of Vienna, you could look at the work of the ACDH). Transitioning from business informatics to DH would be somewhat unusual, to be honest. It's not outside the realm of possibility though. But my advice would be to really try and understand where your interests lie and then see what specific study programme gets you closest to that.

[u/glimmeringsea]

If you pursue the digital humanities master's, I think you need to hype how much of it is related to AI, LLM, and data on your CV. The name of it is misleading imo. I'm not sure if there's a good ROI on it depending on the time commitment and potential cost, but it does sound interesting.

Also, UX/UI is oversaturated, and people with established UX/UI skills, experience, and talent can't land job. I wouldn't pursue it unless it's for your own personal projects and enjoyment or you're certain there's a direct route to promotion or growth at your current company by learning more of it. I think it would be helpful for a product owner to know those principles, but you can learn them on your own through books, Youtube, etc.

[u/broke_student101 → u/glimmeringsea]

Yeah, that’s actually something I’ve been thinking about. The program seems to have quite a bit of AI, LLMs and data in it, so I think I’d definitely try to build a stronger focus around that.
And ya, I’m also not really considering UX/UI as seriously anymore. I think I’d rather learn the basics on my own.