About

The corona pandemic has fundamentally changed our everyday lives. Digital tools and spaces have become the norm in both professional and private contexts. Nevertheless, many people take advantage of every opportunity, no matter how small, to meet in person and experience things "for real."

According to the big tech companies this dichotomy will increasingly widen and the reality it creates will continuously change. Everyday life will take place more and more in the digital realm until it finally merges with it completely. Avatars are taking over our social interaction; they no longer just represent us - they are us.

Facebook renamed itself "Meta" both asserting and recognizing its view of the importance of the metaverse. The company describes its plans and ideas as follows: "In 3D spaces in the metaverse, you can spend time with others, learn, collaborate, and play in a new way that surpasses anything possible today" (https://about.meta.com/de/meta/).

This year's "International Summer School" (ISS) of the Mainz Master's program "Digital Methodology in the Humanities and Cultural Studies" therefore engages the them: "Exploring the Metaverse of Methods." We will focus on methods within the metaverse. In addition to introducing techniques and tools for collaborative, web-based work (e.g., with Git and Markdown), network and graph analysis, and appropriate data visualizations, we will therefore also examine metaverse ideas, their development, and their implications from a more philosophical perspective.

The goal of the Summer School is to build expertise in fundamental concepts, methods, and tools used in a variety of humanities and cultural studies disciplines. At the same time, participants will gain support in critically engaging the approaches presented and analytically discussing implications of their application for the research process.

Students in the master's program will also have the opportunity to learn about the program's process in general and its focus in particular. Moreover, students can engage in conversation with faculty members as well as graduate and advanced undergraduate students.