Interview with Prof. Dr Steven E. Jones (University of South Florida)

In this interview, Professor Steven Jones talks about his career and training in textual studies. Because of his specific interest in the materiality of texts in archives, he soon became interested in the relationship of the physical and the digital as a theoretical problem and methodological issue. He then talks about the myth of Roberto Busa as “founding father of digital humanities” which he sets out to complement with history. He comments on Busa’s work with IBM and on the young female punched card operators that worked in the first institutional digital humanities centre that Busa created. Jones is currently working on a project to reconstruct and model the centre and the work that was done there. To conclude, he offers his comments on the directions digital humanities might take on in the future.