Within the interdisciplinary field of digital humanities, technology is a powerful tool that enables scholars to transform and deepen their research, broaden information access, and engage the public. At the University of Houston, those scholars receive support from the Digital Humanities Core.
    Created as a partnership between the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Data Science Institute and UH Libraries, the DH Core serves both student and faculty researchers with a digital project production and publishing facility equipped with technological infrastructure, research tools and interdisciplinary expertise. Scholars are encouraged to reach out with ideas and strategize with DH Core specialists around how they can use technology to elevate their research plans.
    The world of digital humanities at UH is growing, thanks in large part to the efforts of talented, driven students. These self-starters bring a variety of strengths and specializations, such as data science skills, to the program. Opportunities abound for students to analyze and clean research data and to collaborate with faculty on identifying data issues and offering solutions.

“A Community of Practice”

    As director of the Digital Humanities Core Facility, Linda García Merchant is reimagining ways for UH students of any discipline to get involved in digital humanities.
    “We’re beginning to shift the culture,” García Merchant says. “Faculty don’t have to do this work by themselves anymore. We’re building a community of practice, finding practitioners suited to create better opportunities for the scholarship they’re producing.”
    DH gives students autonomy and challenges them to get comfortable with explaining their work and making points clearly. For example, DH students teach their peers how to use data visualization tools such as Tableau and ClioVis. And, because students learn best from one another, they often create better outcomes.
    Students have helped in other ways — hosting public-facing DH events, publishing a newsletter, leading virtual workshops on data tools and holding their own walk-in consultation hours. Along the way, they’ve mastered the techniques of building DH projects and gained real-world experience, making them more marketable when it comes time to find a job.
    Supported by the DH Core, the digital media internship pilot program empowers students to work as developers of humanities projects with public-facing deliverables. They become part of a multidisciplinary team, collaborating over 15 weeks to create a fully developed research site that may consist of blog posts, data visualizations and mapping, descriptive content, and other interactive features.
    One such project is Señora Power, a 2023 US Latino Digital Humanities Center Grant in Aid recipient. The project, which will live on the USLDH project portal provided by the DH Core, is led by principal investigators at several universities who track the changes in political consciousness and identity expression of women of Mexican descent living in Houston or Los Angeles from 1900–1984. The investigators research archival material and interview community members, piecing together a narrative with the goal of making Chicana history widely accessible.
    That’s where Lauryn White (’23) and current undergraduate student Maryam Eldershaby come in. As interns, their task was to bring the Señora Power project to life online. In coordination with the principal investigators, White determined how they wanted to present the project findings to the public on the website. She organized the website’s planning and production and facilitated asynchronous communication.

    After learning about Eldershaby’s experience and skill set, White recommended her as the team’s lead designer. Eldershaby’s role was to preserve the digital archives by creating a user-friendly, interactive website containing data visualizations, audio files, archival images and geographical data. She designed visuals and wireframes in Figma that aligned with the project’s message.
    Eldershaby says she’s grateful for her teammates, who were professional and collaborative. “Working with this group opened new experiences for me and advanced a lot of my skills,” she says. “I’m really proud of all the work we have done.”
    Eldershaby also previously worked on SYRIOS: Studying Urban Relationships and Identity Over Ancient Syria, a DH project that “brings the history of ancient Syria to modern audiences through a study of coins.” It was working on this project, she says, that helped her realize that preservation for posterity is a primary factor in the field of digital humanities, which presents a wealth of opportunities for researchers to collect, evaluate and share information in new and dynamic ways.

“DH connects the arts and technology in a more engaging, accessible way while preserving history.” — Maryam Eldershaby, Digital Humanities Intern and Lead Designer

    “The Señora Power website is accessible for individuals to explore the stories, and it also preserves important cultural knowledge for the future, unlike a paper that could be crumpled up and gone forever,” Eldershaby says. “DH connects the arts and technology in a more engaging, accessible way while preserving history.”
    During her time in the DH Core, White learned how to code a website, among other technical skills. She’s now studying for a master’s in neuroscience and behavior at UH-Clear Lake, but she was pursuing her bachelor’s in psychology when she began working on her first DH Core project, The Year 1771, which provides a new approach to reading texts to uncover word patterns.
    “I was in charge of migrating website material from Wix and building the 1771 website in the DH Core facility domain,” she says. “I eventually took what I learned and used it to give helpful critiques when I evaluated Maryam’s Señora Power website.”
    White says DH offers something for everyone. “There’s always something that needs to be preserved. Digital humanities is so expansive; it’s not just computers and numbers. There is a humanities portion that needs people to preserve community material, such as photos or writings. It’s more than just tech.”
    DH creates entry points that allow us to see concepts and data anew. It’s about showing and telling stories in a way where we all can understand them better.
    “The great thing about DH is that it helps us engage our curious selves,” García Merchant says. “I always tell students to do DH with joy, because when you’re really interested in what you’re doing, you’ll be fascinated by all the different potential directions you can take.”