Author: watrall
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Project Musings
As the semester rolls on and we are tasked with trying to visualize our CHI projects, I am feeling a little stressed and inspired, all at the same time! As I’ve said before, my project is going to center around the research I’ve been conducting in the Sociolinguistics Lab in the Department of Linguistics and…
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Subadult Skeletal Age Estimation
As it gets later and later into the semester, I’ve started trying to put together ideas for my CHI project. While I’ve been thinking about what specifically I would like to do, there was one notion that kept popping up in my head: make accessible, usable, and relevant for other people, not just myself. Sometimes…
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ICTs and Indigenous Knowledges
This past Friday, we talked about licensing. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m interested in information and communication technologies (ICTs) and traditional knowledges (TK), which are the product of the intricate relationships between indigenous peoples and the specific places in which they have lived or used to live for long periods of time. Questions of licensing…
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Looking forward
Hello! O’siyo! こにちわ! It is November and we are moving further into web design and interactive visuals in our cohort work. I am getting excited about planning my project. I know I want to do something with visuals, space/place, and water. I am still holding onto the idea of working with the water systems in…
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Introducing John Doyle-Raso//Building a database of Lake Victoria’s environment and economy
Hello all! I am a second-year doctoral student in the Department of History. I am especially interested in studying environmental history and histories of science and technology, focusing on water politics in Africa. I am interested in historicizing the water politics of Lake Victoria as part of the broader water politics of the Nile Basin.…
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Capturing Campus Cuisine: Early Foodways at Michigan State University
I love food, and this year I am combining this love with both of my fellowship, Cultural Heritage Informatics (CHI) and Campus Archaeology Program, into a focused research project on the Early Period of MSU’s campus (1855-1870). Within the Campus Archaeology fellowship I am working with fellow Susan Kooiman on a meal reconstruction project. This…
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Changing Gears
When I first began thinking about a prospective CHI fellowship project, I wanted to map the Underground Railroad between Detroit and Windsor, specifically spatializing where and how people escaped. In the last few weeks however, I have begun to think about fundamentally changing my project. My primary reason for this is that I am studying…
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Wrestling with The Digital Dissertation in Anthropology
Academia is changing. The old standard 500+ page, written dissertation may become obsolete as new technologies develop and academia starts accepting new models of the dissertation. One model is incorporating digital components (i.e. a map, database, appendices, or other entities) into dissertation projects. Because of my participation and experiences in the CHI fellowship, I have…
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Making Archaeology Accessible
These past few weeks I’ve been pondering what to do for my CHI fellowship project. This has prompted a lot of introspection on what I think is important about digital cultural heritage, along with many internet searches. One of my core beliefs is that archaeology, in some form, should be accessible to the public (this…
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Språklivet: Using Digital Humanities to explore connections between language, identity, and the problem of boundaries
Since my last blog post, the foundations of digital project planning have been arranged, and the next steps have been taken towards creating the framework for my CHI project. From learning the fundamentals of project management to work plan preparation to geospatial web mapping, the tools have been placed in our hands to begin the…