News & Updates
Call for 2023-2024 Cultural Heritage Informatics Graduate Fellowship Applications
The Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative invites applications for its 2023-2024 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. 2023-2024...
Launching the Stratford Heritage Guide
I am excited to announce the launch of my ‘22-’23 CHI project, the Stratford Heritage Guide. The presentation of Shakespeare’s legacy has evolved over the centuries, and narratives regarding the greatness of the playwright have been curated in very specific and intentional ways to cement him as an English cultural icon. Although Shakespeare wrote all his plays in London, his hometown of...
Midwives to the Countryside Launch
As we close finals week here at Michigan State University, I am excited to be launching my CHI project: “Midwives to the Countryside.” The aim of creating this project was to map midwife training programs with the express purpose of demonstrating what the rural-urban gap in midwife care looked like in the early years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This is a particularly important...
Introducing “Mapping Forensic Anthropology Research”!
Welcome to the launch of my new website, Mapping Forensic Anthropology Research (MFAR), the result of the project I worked on as a 2022-2023 CHI Graduate Fellow! This website is an exploratory resource for students and professionals in forensic anthropology. It is aimed at helping to understand what United States-based documented skeletal collections are used for the biological profile methods...
The Debut of The Urban Toxicity Project
The dream for this project is much bigger than its current reality. Right now, it is a map with two points marked on it and only one of those points (Milwaukee) will take you anywhere. However, it represents the seed from which I am hoping to grow a collaborative effort to document incidents of urban toxicity in the United States. A project I am (creatively) calling, The Urban Toxicity Project....
Introducing “Graduate Labor Rising”
Happy May Day! I am pleased to announce the launch of my 2022-2023 project, Graduate Labor Rising. This website traces the development of graduate labor unions across the US, their roots in radical labor traditions, and their turn towards justice-oriented bargaining, then shares a library of collective bargaining agreements to aid current and future graduate labor organizers. Despite the...
Switching Gears
Whenever working on a digital project, I try to be open to the fact that my initial plan will not always be possible to follow through all the way to the end. I’ve often had issues with my code since I’m primarily self-taught, or sometimes things just don’t turn out the way I imagined once I pair the technology with my content. I’ve learned to accept these little failures as part of the process...
Where, oh, where has my modal gone?
Having finally sorted out my map, and even gotten the pop-ups to work the way I wanted them to, I have been attempting to build out a modal that will appear on load to provide an overview of the project and give users suggestions for exploring the map. The first half of that was not too bad. I was able to figure out how to create a modal that opened on a button push. But when I then tried to...
Database Decisions
After pivoting my project to create a searchable text database of collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) instead of a speculative, collaborative map with local union members, my next step was to decide how to actually create this database. To build or not to build? There are two main types of databases: relational and non-relational. Relational databases, like Structured Query Language...
A Learning Curve!
Getting the “Mapping Nzulezo” project going is exciting as it is equally challenging. As a novice in the I.T. world, I am expected to grapple with some technical issues as I figure out how to create an interactive story map. Yes, an interactive story map! That is how I envisioned the “Mapping Nzulezo” project. My professor and colleague CHI Fellows recommended J. Dougherty &...
