Fall 2022 DH Open House

On Monday, October 24, members of the digital humanities community at the University of Virginia gathered on the third floor of Clemons Library for the Fall 2022 Digital Humanities Open House. The schedule began with an informal poster session featuring organizations affiliated with digital humanities from all over the university as well as various projects. Within a few feet of each other, those in attendance were able to learn about opportunities through the UVa Library system, the Scholars’ Lab, and IATH (The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities), just to name a few. Steps away, participants could see some of these opportunities in action through projects such as “Finding Virginia’s Freetowns,” a 3Cavaliers-funded project by Suzanne Moomaw, Lisa Goff, and Sarah Wells. While housed in various parts of the university, each of these organizations and projects represents the interconnectivity of the digital humanities community at UVa.

In the second part of the program, various people in the digital humanities community gave lightning talks on their organizations and projects. In addition to the poster sessions, these lightning talks allowed presenters to showcase their work in action. For instance, Fotini Kondyli gave a tour of the VR project, “Inhabiting Byzantine Athens,” and Ammon Shepherd demonstrated how the Makerspace helps ideas materialize in topics ranging from tumors to photobooths. The Open House made visible what we know to be true about digital humanities at the university, but that sometimes becomes lost in the hustle and bustle of everyday university life: UVa’s digital humanities community thrives through these different nodes in its network. The Open House, then, drew attention to the range of opportunities available for experienced and beginning digital humanists alike and how these opportunities might grow and complement each other.

Image and text by Elise Foote, PhD+ Intern