In partnership with KEY, SFU’s Big Data Initiative, the Digital Humanities Innovation Lab was pleased to welcome Dr. Mark Algee-Hewitt on September 22, 2017. Mark is an Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and English at Stanford University, and the Director of the Stanford Literary Lab.

In the 1980s, Carole Gerson received a SSHRC grant to research writing as women’s work in Canada and began compiling a list of the names of women whose works had appeared in print. As the digital became more integrated into humanities research and Gerson’s list grew longer, including these names in a print resource no longer made sense. “What do you do when you’ve got the names of 5000 obscure women writers about whom little is known?” Gerson asks. “You create a database.”

The Digital Humanities Innovation Lab kicked off its Fall 2017 DH Café series on September 19 as Dr. Juan Pablo Alperin introduced participants to the online annotation tool hypothes.is. Juan is an Assistant Professor in the Publishing Program at Simon Fraser University, and the Associate Director of Research with the Public Knowledge Project.

On May 4-5, 2017, the SFU-UVic Digital Pedagogy Network met in Victoria to share the ways they teach and learn in the digital humanities. In the newly-opened Digital Scholarship Commons at the UVic library, students, librarians, faculty members, and community partners gathered to present their research and projects, address opportunities and challenges in creating virtual and material communities, and discuss best practices in the DH classroom. Workshops made teaching and learning hands-on as leaders helped participants gain skills using different digital tools, environments, and resources. 

I met with John Maxwell and Alessandra Bordini in John’s office on a typically grey spring day. Maxwell is the director of the Publishing Program at SFU and Bordini is the lead researcher for this project as well as self-described Aldus Manutius fan, among her many other qualifications. Tacked to his office door, Maxwell has small printout of the classical Latin adage, festina lente, which means “make haste slowly.” This adage is not only personified in the anchor and dolphin of Aldus Manutius’ printer’s mark but also occasionally in the nature of digital humanities projects. I sat down and talked with Maxwell and Bordini about Aldus and what it means to do DH.

In honour of Freedom to Read Week (February 26 - March 4, 2016), an annual event established by the Book and Periodical Council that “encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom,”1 the Digital Humanities Innovation Lab (DHIL) has put together a series of visualisations showcasing a selection of challenged books in Canada as well as banned and censored authors all over the world.. The project serves to highlight the pervasiveness of censorship among some of the most beloved and important works of literature and places them in the context of the times and places in which they were banned or censored.

On January 26, 2017, the SFU-UVic Digital Pedagogy Network hosted a one-day Student Digital Showcase at SFU Harbour Centre in Vancouver. This event brought students in English and Publishing departments from Simon Fraser University, the University of Victoria, and the University of Toronto to present their digital humanities research, projects, and pedagogical practices.

On February 6, 2017, SFU’s Research Commons and the Digital Humanities Innovation Lab held a workshop on Digital Storytelling Using Twine. The first half of the afternoon featured research presentations on digital storytelling by Dr. David Gaertner, Assistant Professor in the First Nations & Indigenous Studies Program at UBC, and Simone Hausknecht, graduate student in Education at SFU.

On January 25, 2017, SFU Library's Research Commons and Digital Humanities Innovation Lab held a follow-up workshop to the Podcasting for Scholarly Communication workshop. Hannah McGregor led the Intermediate Podcasting workshop and is an assistant professor in Publishing@SFU as well as the co-host of Witch, Please, a scholarly podcast about the Harry Potter world.

SFU Library’s Research Commons and Digital Humanities Innovation Lab held its third workshop in the DH Skills series on November 3, 2016. Led by Julie Jones (GIS and Maps Librarian), Rebecca Dowson (Digital Scholarship Librarian) and Medhi Aminipouri, (PhD candidate in the Department of Geography), the workshop introduced participants to geospatial approaches for visualizing historical and fictional material, and GIS tools such as ArcGIS and Story Maps.