During 1st CETAPS meeting on Digital Humanities, we interviewed Prof. Carlos Ceia, the director of the Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies (CETAPS) in Lisbon about Digital Lab and Digital Humanities. The interview includes prime insights into Prof. Ceia's ideas about the future of Education and morover, introduces his works in Digital Humanities.  

You can read full interview with him below -

Lizi Kolbaia: So, the first question is if you could share a little about your background and how you are connected to digital lab and digital humanities. 

Carlos Ceia: My background is in traditional literary studies and education. These are the two main fields I work in. However, I have been connected to technology since the beginning of my career. I have always liked computers and have tried to keep up with technological advancements. I am entirely self-taught in this area, having no formal courses in technology. Nevertheless, I have followed the development of technology throughout my career. Being self-taught and naturally curious about technology, I strive to stay updated of the latest developments, particularly in digital humanities and educational tools. These tools help us perform our work in literary and educational studies as effectively and efficiently as possible

Lizi Kolbaia: Could you tell us about how the digital humanities take part in your own research if you are doing something right now? 

Carlos Ceia: That's a tricky question because there were two periods in our academic lives: pre-Google times and post-Google times. In pre-Google times, we did the usual thing—went to the library and read a lot of books to find even the simplest information. It could take months or years to find what we were looking for. After Google, everything changed. Everything became faster, and we could access bibliographies, especially those not readily available before. This change allowed us to produce more efficiently. Since November two years ago, with the advent of ChatGPT, the world scenario has changed again. More than ever, it has transformed everything we do. Now, we have two possibilities: either we ignore these advancements and stick to traditional research methods, which is not my viewpoint, or we try to learn as much as possible and inform our students while learning new tools ourselves. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm teaching literary and digital education for the master's in English studies and learning simultaneously. I must say this because I'm trying to keep up with and understand the rapid development of language models over the past year. They have been developed so quickly and efficiently that I'm constantly revising my methods and the way I assess my students. I'm developing new skills while teaching new skills, particularly in using AI tools available for all kinds of research. From what I've learned so far, literary or educational criticism hasn't changed, but the starting point of research has changed completely. I no longer have to spend countless hours in the library to find a piece of information. Now, I can get it in one second using one of these language models. This means I can start writing and thinking about what I'm writing with more time to reflect, which is a significant advantage. That's what I try to convey to my students. Although it might seem otherwise because of the ease of copying and pasting, we now have more time to think critically about what we write. We don't have to spend as much time as we did ten or twenty years ago reading numerous books and articles to collect a few pieces of relevant information. Now, we can access that information faster with one click, allowing us to start writing and thinking about our topics more efficiently. This is a total game changer, and I believe we will have to change almost everything we do, especially how we do it, but not how we think about it. Critical thinking will remain, and hopefully, we will continue to think critically about what we read and write, but we can do it faster and have more time to do it, which is very important.

Lizi Kolbaia: It's not in my questions but it came to me right now. What would be the biggest obstacle you came across while doing that? Like maybe students’ attitude? 

Carlos Ceia: That's easy. It's not about the students' attitude; it's about managing information. Now, you have to acquire a new skill, which is being a very good manager of digital information. Right now, you have almost an infinite quantity of information to manage. This is a crucial skill you need to develop. You must be proficient in managing all the information available to you. This is extremely important. Apart from that, we must persuade our students to act within ethical boundaries. This is very important. Their work must be as fair as it used to be in the past, despite the temptation to copy-paste what they find. As I tell them, the information they find might be correct, but sometimes it might not be. They need to check and accept this. If everyone asks the same prompt to any GPT, they will get more or less the same answer. Therefore, they must be prepared to differentiate themselves from other users of that GPT.

This is a new challenge, and they need to acquire new skills to become distinct scientific writers from their colleagues. We do not want to be exactly the same dozens of times. They need to find their own style and thinking, and this has not changed at all. It is more important than ever.

Lizi Kolbaia: Talking about your style, that is our next question about your research center. What makes your research center unique? What is your niche that you are looking for? 

Carlos Ceia: First of all, the way we work with each other is in a very fruitful interdisciplinary mode. We have literary studies, cultural studies, translation studies, and educational studies, all working together in the same environment and with the same colleagues, but from different perspectives. This crossing of different research areas is one of our major assets compared to other research centres. Normally, research centres in our area of literary studies do not have this kind of interdisciplinary approach. This is very useful and important. For instance, we managed to organise a conference on video games that involved collaboration from everyone around. We had contributions from someone with a literary background, someone with a cultural background, someone with a translation background, and someone with an educational background. This is what really matters. We also involve people from other scientific backgrounds, which makes our setup very unique. This openness to other scientific areas has been one of the keys to our success so far.

Lizi Kolbaia: I do agree there, because I'm from CETAPS too. And I think we've discussed this a little bit in the beginning, but again, how do you think the digital humanities is evolving nowadays? 

Carlos Ceia: That's again a big question. Nobody knows. First of all, it is increasing and developing very, very fast, in a very fast mode. And it's difficult to anticipate the future. I do not know what the future will be. What I know is, the present is already very different from what we are used to seeing in humanities. So if, in just two years, the GPTs and the generative artificial intelligence tools have evolved this way, this fast, it's amazing what the future will be in 10 or 20 years. Maybe the physical book will disappear, or it will stay in all libraries and museums. Maybe, because everything tends to be digital, in digital formats. So maybe we'll become digital persons and scientists only. And the physical book maybe will disappear from our, academic environments. We will have access to more scientific data than ever. So maybe, from this point of view, we can provide answers to ancient problems that were not available and that we can share immediately with anyone in the world. And maybe we will find new solutions for all problems in the best way, even for other sciences, in scientific areas outside of humanities. And hopefully, this is a major worry right now, especially with people from education, hopefully we will never substitute man-thinking for machine-thinking. Hopefully, we will never have a machine trying to do our human work. This is a big issue right now. Right now, in many European countries, we have a shortage of teachers, for instance. And people are saying, well, why not use virtual assistants to substitute human teachers? Because we don't have enough human teachers right now, and we won't have enough human teachers until the end of this decade. And this is for sure. Today, we just learned a new study proving exactly this for this country. 

 

Lizi Kolbaia: For Portugal?

Carlos Ceia: For Portugal. But the solution cannot be using a virtual assistant to substitute a teacher.

Lizi Kolbaia: I was a teacher, I know. This is impossible. 

Carlos Ceia: The human factor cannot be removed from any educational environment, so this is impossible. This cannot even help us solve the problem of teacher shortages. However, we will see what happens. The only good thing about this, related to the problem, is that by using good educational tools, we can somehow compensate for the fact that our students have fewer teachers. In some subjects, there will be no education available at all. So maybe by using some digital tools, while we cannot replace the teachers we need, we can help fill the gap that we know is already there and will become worse.

Lizi Kolbaia: And last question. I know we just started the meeting, but if you could summarize what you... Is it what you expected?

Carlos Ceia: It is what I expected. Unfortunately, we cannot have our colleagues from Stanford for now, but we will have them in the future. I know a little bit about what they are doing there, and I was very keen on learning more. However, our colleagues from Italy and Germany are providing us with very interesting experiences and practices. We may follow some of those practices. What we really want is to establish networks and collaborative work with them. This is very important. If you want to develop digital humanities, you cannot do it alone. It’s impossible. So, we have to find good partnerships. This is a good opportunity to find two very good partnerships and start working with our colleagues in Germany and Italy, developing projects together. This is the best way to do digital humanities: working together in good networks, with good collaborative work, and with very interdisciplinary viewpoints that will help us find new truths and new answers to all problems.

Lizi Kolbaia: Thank you so much. 

Carlos Ceia: My pleasure.

Lizi Kolbaia: Actually, it was very interesting to talk to you. Thank you so much.