One of the challenges of my project is that not only am I building a digital experience, but I’m attempting a new method of analysis. It is both new to my own research methods toolbox, and it is a process that is rarely used in my field. NLP (or natural language processing) is a computational method that is often used in computation linguistics, social media analysis, and other big data research disciplines. However, in journalism, we tend to be fairly old school. Many of us journalism academics are former practicing journalists. Unless we’re interactive designers, we typically don’t have much ..read more

The Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative invites applications for its 2024-2025 Cultural Heritage Informatics Graduate Fellowship program. The Cultural Heritage Informatics Fellowships offer MSU graduate students the skills to creatively and thoughtfully apply digital methods and computational approaches to cultural heritage collections, materials, data, questions, and challenges. 2024-2025 CHI Fellowship Call The Cultural Heritage Informatics Graduate Fellowship Program offer MSU graduate students the skills to creatively and thoughtfully apply digital methods and computational ..read more

We discussed this at the beginning of CHI, but what I’ve learned the most through this fellowship is that failing does not equal losing. Of course, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t cause me to get a little sad or even angry when I do fail. The biggest “fail” (if you can really call it that) for me during this fellowship was my attempt at Bootstrapping my CHI Fellows project. I did not have a lot of confidence in my ability to develop a project from scratch, and since the Bootstrap for my group’s Project Vision worked out really well, that was the path I chose. I was really excited about it because ..read more

In my last blog post, I discussed a few details about my current CH/DH NLP research project where I intend to investigate to what extent a corpus can be “reconstructed” using NLP techniques. Since then, I’ve done some practical work and some broader thinking. I’ll start with updates on the practical.  As my project calls for NLP analysis, I’ve set myself to learning those tools. I’ve started working with spaCy and would like to say that I have found William J.B Mattingly’s textbook to be very helpful: Mattingly, William J.B. 2023. Introduction to Python for Humanists. Chapman & Hall ..read more

In my last post, I wrote about what I was hoping to develop for my final project as a CHI Fellow. I planned to create a digital archive for materials associated with the historical Mt Pleasant Indian Industrial School. Instead, I will be building a web map that illustrates the spatial and temporal connections of one material type associated with the history of the Native American Boarding Schools: historical postcards. (Learn more about the history of postcards from this Smithsonian link.) The Boarding Schools produced propaganda materials to inspire White communities to support their cause. I ..read more

Art Historical Cannon in America The most popular and highly sought after art museums hold a great significance to how society learns about different types of artwork. The National Gallery of Art in D.C holds the Presidential paintings, and works ranging from the Middle Ages to Western Art; The Met, NYC, is the largest museum in America and houses a large Egyptian collection; These high-profile museums and other notable ones are a great place to not only enjoy art, but to learn about history through the lenses of certain eras. However, most of the art acquired in said museums are male Euro-cen ..read more

I did not think much about the digital when I came to MSU. I had a personal website that I was proud of and I knew I was interested in photogrammetry as a tool to document archaeological finds. Little did I know that my interest in photogrammetry would lead me to where I am today. Photogrammetry at the Belize Institute of Archaeology. Photo: Jack Biggs During the first year of my Ph.D. program, I learned the process behind photogrammetry and was able to utilize the skill in the MSU Bioarchaeology Lab. During the summer of 2022, I traveled to Belize with Jack Biggs and our advisor, Dr. Gabe Wro ..read more

The first step in creating our CHI Fellowship project is pitching our project idea to our cohort. Each of the fellows creates a project vision document, where we define our project scope, product, audiences, technology needs, and all manner of details about the project we hope to create by the end of the program. Story Atlas is still in the beginning stages, but the hope is to document its development to provide a guide for future CHI projects. So far, progress has consisted of identifying technical specifications, identifying milestones, and outlining the project vision document, part of whic ..read more

During our last meeting in Fall 2023, I presented my proposal for the final project inspired by the second rapid development project in Sri Lanka. I proposed building a website called “Mapping Mahaweli” with a digital map that archives the historical milestones of the Accelerated Mahaweli Development Project since 1961. The website will provide a platform for users to understand the river-based development project critically. For those unfamiliar with the Mahaweli, it is the longest river in Sri Lanka. It runs 208 miles, starting from the central highlands and flowing across the country until ..read more

In my last post I briefly introduced myself (#PrimaDeAfuera), described the work I do, and highlighted some of the people who help make my time here at MSU possible. In this post, I share more about the project I want to work on for the remainder of the CHI Fellowship. To start, I’ll share that I had a rough project idea at the start of this fellowship. This idea was full of excitement about using VR and 360º projection to immerse an audience in the complex cultural, visual, historic, and sonic landscapes of Borinkén (Puerto Rico); just 1 of 14 US territories (aka colonies). I wanted to create ..read more