Rewiring Digital Humanities through an Ethics of Ecological Care

This paper advocates for a fundamental transformation of the Digital Humanities (DH) field through the adoption of an ethics of ecological care, challenging the discipline’s current entanglement with environmentally damaging digital infrastructures. Drawing on feminist care ethics, postcolonial ecocriticism, and environmental humanities, we argue that DH must move beyond surface-level sustainability and engage in a deep, critical reassessment of its pedagogies, methodologies, and institutional affiliations. The paper critiques DH’s complicity in extractive practices and digital techno-solutionism, calling for a shift from neutrality to active environmental accountability by introducing a two-pronged strategy: rewiring DH methodologies to reflect ecological awareness and embedding ecological care into DH education. By examining existing projects within Digital Environmental Humanities (DEH) and eco-critical DH, we highlight pathways for building more inclusive, decolonial, and care-centred practices. We imagine a rewired DH that is not a neutral academic space but a dynamic, ethical actor capable of contributing to planetary health and environmental justice. Positioning DH as a critical site for cultivating collective responsibility in the face of ecological precarity, the paper envisions a care-full DH committed to resisting exploitative systems and fostering sustained, interdisciplinary engagement with the climate crisis.