Hello everyone!
My name is Marissa Knaak and I’m a PhD candidate in the history department at MSU. I have two master’s degrees, one in Public History (University of York, 2015) and the other in gender & cultural studies (Simmons College, 2017). My major fields of study are modern Europe and women’s and gender history, with minor fields in colonial & imperial history and social theory & historiography. My dissertation is a comparative study titled “In the Shadows of Window Displays: The Industrialization of Retailing in Sheffield & Cologne, 1890-1914” that investigates women’s department store labor as industrialized and skilled.
My first exposure to digital heritage was through my mom’s work with the Minnesota Digital Library. As a teenager, I’d accompany her to county historical societies and archives to discuss digitization projects for the library. Choosing history as an undergraduate major, from these and other experiences, was a simple choice. When I decided to pursue graduate school, I knew I wanted to gain further understanding on how “history” is displayed and presented. Although much of my public history degree focused on analog presentations in physical spaces, I was exposed to some of the potentials of the digital.
My current interest in digital heritage and methods is fairly new. In the 2023/24 academic year, I was a teaching assistant for the interim director of the Lab for the Education and Advancement of Digital Research (LEADR) where I gained experience in digital pedagogy. She also told me about the possibility of building a 3D model from architectural plans. During my time in the Sheffield City Archives I had taken pictures of plans for a department store that was destroyed in the Blitz. Almost immediately I visited LEADR to start learning how to build my model.
In addition to CHI this year, I am also working as a graduate assistant in LEADR. In both programs I am hoping to gain a variety of skills and abilities to use in my teaching and research. I am continuing to work on my 3D model, which I am incorporating into my dissertation chapter on the spatial elements of department store work, and I hope to print it someday. I have also enjoyed learning other tools so far – like Flourish for mapping. I’m looking forward to working with the other fellows and getting involved with the digital community!
Recent Comments