When we first imagined an expanded version of our annual spring program, DH@UH, we considered how to provide additional support to the foundation of knowledge sharing and building that characterized our Community of Practice. I remember suggesting speakers, faculty, scholars and students, that could address topics in DH both current and seminal. Each spring we present a series of talks, first by myself and Taylor Davis Van Atta, Head of Research Services that includes the Digital Research Commons, on the state of DH@UH then, two more from scholars in the field of Digital Work, Scholarship and Research. 

The first week in March begins with Rene Ballesteros, the development manager of Latinos in Heritage Conservation, and a graduate student in History and Mexican American studies at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. The week ends on Thursday, March 6, with our keynote speaker Avriel Epps, Ph.D., a computational scientist and Civic Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell University CATLab.

I met each of our speakers last year at conferences where we presented together. For Rene, I got to hear about his work as a Development Manager, and as a student interested in capturing and documenting the hidden histories within community. For Dr. Epps it was witnessing her brilliant take on the cycle of the Black Lives Matter movement via You Tube and then Twitter, looking at media generated, consumed, remediated, rearticulated then rendered invisible, often as the result of removal from social media platforms. 

This year’s talks highlight how knowledge production and dissemination can create a profound impact on our understanding of cycles of movement and make visible localized cultural capital through social sciences and public history. How data is gathered, analyzed, understood and then distributed to reach and meet the demands of both potential and existing audiences requires an appreciation of form. Working with materials as varied as You Tube Videos, Oral Histories and Archival Collections to then make room for the innovative approaches necessary to clearly demonstrate a focus and purpose of the data being addressed.

It is always our goal to bring creative interdisciplinary scholars to speak to our UH community with the hope that their means and methods spark us to the potential innovation towards research methods and digital scholarship within us all.

Best,

Linda Garcia Merchant, Ph.D.
Director, Digital Humanities Core