Rate My Professor James Smithies

Smithies is a historian of culture, ideas, and technology with expertise in Research Software Engineering. His research applies computational tools and methods to humanities, arts, and social sciences subjects, including digital product development such as websites, electronic books, and mobile applications; data analysis of text, image, and social media archives; and provision of digital services like libraries and archives across history, literature, philosophy, sociology, political science, and linguistics. He has published widely, including the monograph The Digital Humanities and the Digital Modern (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), the co-edited Critical Infrastructure Studies and Digital Humanities (University of Minnesota Press, 2026), and Digital Modernity: Why We Need to Think Historically About the Digital Age (Routledge, 2026). Other key publications include “The Kindle™ as Necker Cube” (Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 2024), “Towards a National Data Architecture for Cultural Collections: Designing the Australian Cultural Data Engine” (Digital Humanities Quarterly, 2024), and “Large Language Models and Transnational Research: Introducing the AI as Infrastructure (AIINFRA) Project” (2024). As principal investigator on funded projects such as AI as Infrastructure exploring large language models for historical research, the ARDC Research Software Engineering Capacity Enhancement Project, and the Social Science Research Infrastructure Network, Smithies leads interdisciplinary efforts advancing digital HASS infrastructure in Australia and internationally.