I recently spent the last part of January in the United Arab Emirates. This was my fourth year visiting the UAE and I’ve really enjoyed developing relationships with different colleagues and institutions in both Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
The first part of my visit was spent as an instructor at NYU Abu Dhabi’s first Winter Institue in Digital Humanities (WIDH). This great event was hosted by David Wrisley, Associate Professor of Digital Humanities, and Beth Russell, Head of the Center for Digital Scholarship. David and Beth are both amazing colleagues and the event was amazing. Attendees were from all over the world making for extremely rich conversation both during classes and on social excursions. In my course, I had participants from Egypt, Lebanon, India, China, Italy, Armenia, the UAE, and the US.
The course I taught was Object-Based Digital Humanities for Cultural Heritage. In four short days, we were able to cover sessions on Visualization, Curating/Collect(ing)(ions), Narrative(s), Exhibitions, Objects Real/Virtuality. My cohort was amazing and the group was just as willing to engage with intense discussions on digital epistemology, repatriation, and narrative as they were to learn a variety of tools including WordPress, Omeka, Timeline JS, StoryMap JS, Agisoft Metashape, and Sketchfab. I’ve kept the course site open if you’d like to visit via this link. You can even see the very good 3D model of a croissant two of the students were able to generate during our photogrammetry session.
After WIDH, I headed to Zayed University’s campus in Dubai to continue work I was doing with a group of researchers studying the material and visual culture of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. I started this work during a previous journey to the UAE in 2019, helping the researchers choose the right platforms (WordPress, Scalar, Omeka, etc.), set up hosting, and create schedules for the work necessary for their projects. It was great to get a chance to come back, help each of the group members move further along and see the projects come closer to a conclusion.
While in Dubai I began to discuss with one of my colleagues at Zayed about a possible collaboration with the UAE government on a project to develop a site that depicts the development of the architecture and urban landscape in the emirates since its inception in the 1970s. It seems like a fascinating opportunity and we’ll have to see where it goes.
I’ve grown really fond of the UAE and my connections there. With continued collaborations and the success of WIDH (which seems to certainly be repeated next year), it’s nice to know it’s likely to be a continuing destination in my international work.
