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Tri-Co Faculty Present Digital Scholarship Projects

Our work is informed by critical and ethical approaches to technology practice鈥攕omething that is more important than ever in our current moment! - Alice McGrath, Senior Digital Scholarship Specialist

Our work is informed by critical and ethical approaches to technology practice鈥攕omething that is more important than ever in our current moment! - Alice McGrath, Senior Digital Scholarship Specialist

Last week, faculty and staff from around the Tri-Co came together for the Tri-Co Digital Scholarship Faculty Showcase in Bryn Mawr's Park Science Center, featuring presentations on Digital Scholarship teaching and research projects from all three colleges. By organizing the event, members of the Tri-Co Digital Scholarship Group (Tri-Co DS), a working group from Tri-Co Libraries, hope to start conversations among practitioners and inspire faculty to collaborate on digital projects. "Digital Scholarship is an interdisciplinary field that uses digital technologies and computational methods to expand traditional teaching and research,鈥 said Alice McGrath, Senior Digital Scholarship Specialist at Bryn Mawr and a member of Tri-Co DS. 鈥淥ur work is informed by critical and ethical approaches to technology practice鈥攕omething that is more important than ever in our current moment!"

The showcase consisted of Tri-Co members presenting recent and ongoing digital scholarship projects related to their teaching and research. From Swarthmore, Susan Eberhard, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History, discussed her course for this semester, 鈥淢aterial Culture in Action: Presenting Quaker Objects.鈥 For it, students prepared an exhibition featuring personal objects tied to Quaker history from Swarthmore's collections. Working with Roberto Vargas, Head of Research & Instruction Services, Eberhard and her students . Also from Swarthmore, Amanda Licastro, Head of Digital Scholarship Strategies, presented on an English class she taught, "Virtual Bodies, Virtual Worlds," in which students read several science fiction novels .

Next up were the presenters from Haverford. Chris Rogers, Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing, discussed a Spring 2025 class project, "." Working with Anna Lacy, Digital Scholarship Librarian, Rogers and his students created a WordPress site that features student essays on music. Using an open-source tool, , they were able to embed sound clips directly in the text. After him, Bret Mulligan, Associate Provost and Professor of Classics, demonstrated , a longstanding digital resource that offers a suite of tools for learning Greek and Latin. Mulligan demonstrated his ongoing work on the project, supported by Digital Scholarship Interns, to enhance its vocabulary features.  

The lightning presentations ended with Bryn Mawr faculty sharing Digital Scholarship work funded by Digital Bryn Mawr Project Grants and supported by LITS staff. Min Kyung Lee, Associate Professor of Growth & Structure of Cities, presented on "", a digital exhibit project focused on the now-defunct YWCA building in Germantown, PA. The site features work by the Bryn Mawr鈥檚 2024 Digital Scholarship Summer Fellows as well as a student in a spring 2025 Praxis course and was created in partnership with Friends for the Restoration of the Germantown YWCA.  The exhibit鈥檚 site tells complex histories about the building and the community鈥檚 struggles to save it. It also features documents and photos held by archives and donated by community members. For the last presentation, Irina Walsh, Senior Lecturer in Russian, and Margaret Strair, Lecturer in German Studies, presented on their ongoing project, "Divided Berlin: Parallel Lives in a Multilingual City." For it, the pair are building, in conjunction with LITS staff, educational resources, including and a physical map of Cold War Berlin, which will be used as a backdrop for teaching German and Russian language students skills and cultural history. 鈥淲e are excited about using the digital map and 3D model to help students meaningfully explore the intersection of place, material culture, memory, and linguistic identity,鈥 Walsh said. 鈥淭he project is designed so that learners of German and Russian at all levels can work with it, and we look forward to the project鈥檚 implementation phase,鈥 added Strair. 鈥淲e are so thankful to LITS, the Maker鈥檚 Space, and our Interns for collaborating with us on this project.鈥  

With the presentations finished, presenters and attendees had the remainder of the event to ask questions and learn from each other. "All of these projects are made possible by the deeply collaborative model of digital scholarship embraced by the Tri-Co, where faculty, staff, and students are all co-creators of the work,鈥 said McGrath. 鈥淪o, these kinds of opportunities let us build and share expertise together.鈥 

The Tri-Co DS organizes the in the spring, an intensive professional development opportunity featuring workshops on digital skills for research and teaching. In the meantime, those interested in learning more about digital scholarship can check , which has tutorials and resources. Bryn Mawr community members can also look at  

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