The Center for Digital Research in the Humanities announced its 2024 cohort of Digital Humanities Summer Fellows.
“This year we had the highest number of applications we’ve ever received, with lots of amazing, meritorious projects,” said Carrie Heitman, associate director and fellow of the CDRH and director of the 2024 Digital Humanities Summer Fellowships.
According to Heitman, the selection process was extremely difficult, but she had help from the other members of the CDRH’s Student-Centered Committee who reviewed the applications with her. Kevin McMullen, Katrina Jagodinsky, and Laura Weakly helped Heitman bring together a dynamic group of young scholars who will continue to push the field of digital humanities forward.
The 2024 Digital Humanities Summer Fellows are:
Akua Agyeiwaa Denkyi-Manieson, Ph.D. student in English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, received her master’s degree in English from the University of Ghana and her bachelor’s degree in English and history from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Her project, Digitizing Gold Coast Novels, focuses on four novels written by African authors during Britain’s colonial occupation, 1821 to 1957. Because of the relative inaccessibility, these novels have been left out of the literary canon. Her goal this summer is to digitize and make them available to scholars and readers.
Andrea Wagh, a third-year Ph.D. student in history at UNL, received her master’s degree in history from UNL and her bachelor’s degree in history from Sam Houston State University. Her project, Hidden Histories, aims to create interactive maps to visually trace the lived experiences of Jewish children and the network of French orphanages that hid them during the Holocaust.
Héctor Palala Martínez, a Ph.D. candidate at UNL in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education, received his master’s degrees in educational studies from UNL and the Universidad Rafael Landívar, Guatemala, and his bachelor’s degree in educational studies and languages from the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. His project focuses on building a digital platform to feature trilingual poetry by Mayan heritage students in Wakefield, Nebraska, aiming to enrich educational curricula and celebrate cultural diversity.
Rasaq Malik Gbolahan, a third-year Ph.D. student in literary and cultural studies in the Department of English at UNL, received his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in English from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. This summer, he will work on Translating African Women Poetry in the Digital Age to translate selected English poems of African women poets published in online literary magazines and in print into Yoruba. These translated poems will be published on Atelewo, a decolonial project/initiative cofounded by Gbolahan in 2017.
The fellowship begins on May 28, and runs until Aug. 16, and each student will receive a $4,500 stipend. The students will spend the first half of the fellowship working on their projects in the Dinsdale Family Learning Commons. There they will have access to technology and the expertise of faculty and staff with the CDRH. The fellowship program is designed to support the students’ research, scholarship, professional development, and creative production skills.
