I was so disappointed when I finally had to make the decision to cancel my upcoming trip to Russia due to the spread of the coronavirus. I had been scheduled to spend two weeks as a Visiting Lecturer at ITMO University, where I am the Co-Director of the DH Research Center. I was meant to teach a module on Three-Dimensional and Spatial Approaches to Digital Humanities Narratives, as part of ITMO’s newly-launched international Master’s program in Data, Culture, and Visualization. Alas, for the moment that will have to be postponed for the moment. Hopefully, we can find a time during the summer or fall after global concerns have died down to find a time for me to come teach the course.

I was doubly disappointed because I was looking forward to reconnecting with two other colleagues in St. Petersburg, Pavel Lurje, Head of the Section of Central Asia, Caucasus and Crimea in the Oriental Department of the State Hermitage Museum, and Larisa Zolotova, a 3D designer and jewelry maker who works on 3D scanning and modeling at the Hermitage. I collaborated with Pavel and Larisa on the digital exhibition The Sodgians: Influencers on the Silk Roads and we […]

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 […]