Hello everyone! My name is Bryttany Grimes, and I am a second-year PhD student in the history department. I came to MSU after an 11-year career as a Dispatch Coordinator for an expediting firm. Making the decision to further pursue higher education did not come lightly, and I have yet to regret my decision. My research interests lie in analyzing the Hausa women of Northern Nigeria. I intend to examine the various ways Hausa women expressed their internal conception of womanhood in response to the growth of Islam in the region, British colonialism, and Western social influence.
The heart of this analysis will pertain to a deeper look into how women utilized clothing to express their womanhood. This research is very personal to me, seeing as I am a woman who understands the societal challenges that come from the way that you dress. I believe that clothing is one of the ultimate forms of expression, assimilation, or resistance. With this in mind, I aim to identify the moments in which Hausa women have asserted themselves throughout the period of 1800-1960s. This periodization will allow me to highlight how the ideal of womanhood to Hausa women may have changed and why.
I applied for the Cultural Heritage Informatics fellowship because cultural heritage is central to my own research. Understanding the importance of digital culture in a rapidly increasing digital world, I knew that the fellowship would be transformative for my research. Prior to my time at MSU, I only had tangential experiences and knowledge of the full possibilities of digital scholarship. This changed once I completed the History in the Digital Age course, when I was introduced to several new tools for historical analysis. Throughout the course, we explored several impressive digital projects that could ask new historical questions. I have internalized this experience and will apply it to the way I conduct historical research. I also virtually attended the Digital Humanities conference and was exposed to the numerous interdisciplinary applications of digital technologies. Conference presenters applied these techniques to explore areas of scholarship in ways that I would have never considered. The conference not only inspired me but also expanded my concept of digital scholarship.
It must be acknowledged that the Cultural Heritage Informatics fellowship will be instrumental in today’s evolving job market. Almost every industry is attempting to find new and innovative ways to incorporate technology into their work. This change has caused job recruiters to seek potential employees who possess the skills to be effective in their positions. A quick glance at job boards reflects this change. Not only are academic institutions creating new positions centered on digital technologies, but other fields are moving further into the digital space. These skills are particularly attractive to me as I am interested in moving into a historical consultant position for international women’s rights organizations. My goal is to provide crucial historical and cultural context to inform international organizations better as they create new initiatives and programs to assist African women.
As a Cultural Heritage Informatics fellow, I will be required to complete a digital cultural heritage project upon the completion of my fellowship. I had several ideas about what type of project I would complete, but I was certain that I wanted to do something that would complement my dissertation research. Although my goal may change once I am exposed to new techniques and tools through the fellowship, I am currently considering a mapping project. Using primary source documentation, I want to overlay a historical map of the trans-Saharan trade network that highlights the trade of textiles. This map will show how the trade changed from 1700 to the 1960s. Hopefully, this map will reveal the role of Islam and British colonialism in the types of textiles traded and the creation of textile hubs. This project is directly related to my dissertation, as it encompasses one of my background chapters.
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