News & Updates
Building a CHI project
The CHI fellowship has two moments: introducing the use informatics have for cultural heritage and the development of an individual or a collective digital humanities’ project. The division of those moments is not absolute. The introduction to the use informatics has for social sciences and the humanities comes with instances of practice and learning while doing. During the first part of the CHI...
Visioning Our Final Project | The Migration of Food: Just the Beginning
I was born and raised in Turkey. When I was younger, we, as an extended family, used to spend our summer vacations in the Greek Islands belong to our neighbor country. The main theme of our vacations was the cuisine. Or basically, just eating delicious foods and drinking. To the ones who are not very familiar with them, Turkey and Greece are known for the never-ending political conflict that is...
Beginning Our Final Projects | Visualizing & Planning
The end of the semester in the CHI fellowship comes with the final proposals of our digital cultural heritage projects. Throughout the semester we have been attending workshops and participating in the collaborative rapid development projects to learn skills that will help shape these projects. When I applied for the CHI fellowship I came with an idea that I was really excited about; a teaching...
Epistemic Violence and Resistance through Mapping Kinds
From the very beginning of the fellowship I was extremely eager to participate in the spatial mapping workshops. The reading I remember most from the only philosophy course I ever took defined map making as the process of using generalizations via simplification, symbolization, induction, and classification to construct a physical ontology [1]. This articulated an uneasiness I always feel when...
CHI fellowship in the times of “New Normal”
Every piece of the mundane activities is extraordinary nowadays, yet has started to become normal each day. No one could make me believe that I follow this fellowship remotely outside of the US, in my home country, where curfews on weekends will be put in place soon, in the comfort of my home but with the familiar terror of the ambiguity of even the nearest future. I remember how we used to talk...
Fellowship through Coding | Make Mistakes & Ask Questions
When we were told that the CHI was going completely online I realized how different fellowship would look completely virtual. Throughout the semester we do rapid development projects which allow us to work in small groups with other fellows. These projects include a project vision document, creating a project pitch website based on the vision document, and making an interactive data...
Working together alone
I have honestly been surprised by how much enjoyment can be had in the process of creating the small digital projects we have worked on so far this semester. It is really stimulating to work collaboratively, troubleshooting and engaging creatively about digital spaces that many of us interact with regularly without thinking much about. Initially, I worried that I would find the technical aspects...
Election week and deadlines
This post was suppose to go up a week ago but last week was a nerve racking time. the 2020 elections were a whorl wind of emotions that I can only hope that I don't have to experience again. I never though that in my life time I would get to see my hometown (shout out to Fort Worth) turn blue or that, of all places, Georgia was switch. The main reason for my surprise is voter suppression in the...
Virtual Visualization of the Middle East: conflict – migration – displaced
Lesvos Island, Greece (2015/2016) - refugees trekking after boat landing. I came across a blog titled “A Guide to Online Visual Sources in Middle East, North Africa, and Islamic Studies” which was not only relevant to this fellowship but proved to be quite interesting. The post website addressed my personal goal, which is to illustrate the idea that images can aid in education and awareness....
Coding and the useful idea of productive failure.
My training as a social science scholar never considered the potential uses informatics could have in my scholarship. Consequently, even when I received some education regarding project management (particularly tied to administrative business), I never had any preparation for the complexities of collectively building "digital projects." CHI fellowship has provided me with the tools to advance in...
