His work is centred on computing across the arts, humanities and interpretative social sciences.īecause computing is a techno-scientific activity this work is also concerned with and looks forĬollegial help from the sciences. The Society for Digital Humanities / Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs, Canada. Lyman Award from the National Humanities Center and the Rockefeller Foundation, U.S.Īnd in 2005 he won the Award for Outstanding Achievement, Computing in the Arts and Humanities from the University of Western Sydney Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews and Editor of Humanist. London Professor, School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, The Doctoral Programme, Department of Digital Humanities, King's College McCarty is FRAI / Professor of Humanities Computing and Director of On his early involvement with the conference scene and people who have influenced him, from academics to his calligraphy teacher Lloyd Reynolds.ĭr. So too, with funding from the Social SciencesĪnd Humanities Research Council of Canada he was able to undertake a research project on Ovid's Metamorphosis. The role brought to meet with a range of scholars interested in computing had a lasting influence on him. In Toronto he was keenlyĪware of the staff-faculty divide and the marginalised position of those who used computers in Humanities research. In 1984/5, as he was finishing his PhD, he accepted an academic support role at the Centre forĬomputing in the Humanities at Toronto, where he remained until 1996 when he accepted an academic post in King's College London. Whilst undertaking a PhD on 17th century non-dramatic poetry. His first encounter with what we now call digital humanities was at the University of Toronto where he worked on the Records of Early English Drama project So, he learned to programme “on the job” with help from a talented physicist turned computer programmer named Bill Gates (no association with Microsoft). There he did not have the opportunity to take formal training in computing for the most part, Computer Science departments did not exist then. After his dreams of becoming a physicist were thwarted he transferred to Reed College. Scanning equipment for the Alvarez high-energy physics projects. He recounts that his earliest encounter with computing was in the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Berkley where he worked with semi-automated This interview was carried out with Willard McCarty on Tuesday 27th March, 2012 in University College London.