Current Projects

An Analysis of Alternative Skills in Academic Job Ads
As a PhD interested in alt-ac careers, I felt that the digital skills I was gaining for my alternative career plan were also an asset on the academic market, as I've written about before. This project finds the data to back this idea up. I analyze the 1,658 job ads of the 2015-2016 MLA Jobs Information List PDFs. I analyze them for the presence of skills useful beyond the academic market, and find correlations between skills and fields. I got to learn some NVivo and SPSS for this project, which was great fun. I presented an early version of this project at the MLA 2018 Conference. (See the session information, my original abstract for the project, and the Inside Higher Ed write-up.)
Textual Analysis for a Community Shakespeare Troupe
I work with a community Shakespeare troupe that puts on a yearly outdoor "original practices" production--in this case, that means no rehearsal or formal blocking. The first full run-through of the show is the first night of the performance. It's an unusual case in that developing strong textual analysis skills is an immediate and urgent necessity for the actors. I became interested in seeing whether digital humanities textual analysis could help enhance their decisions. Ultimately, I found that for my analysis to be meaningful, I had to embrace the community's methodology, which led to all sorts of interesting experiments about trying to embody word clouds and act out network graphs. (See the actors' page for more information.)
The MLA Committee on Information Technology
This committee takes an advisory role on all matters related to technology for the Modern Language Association. We also plan sessions for each MLA Convention, including upcoming sessions on Information Security and Hacking the Scholarly Workflow. Future projects with this group are probably going to include a blog post series on labor and hiring in digital scholarship and a CareBot aiming to challenge the stress of the annual convention. More information on the MLA website and the CIT blog.

Recent Projects

  • Bryn Mawr College Digital Competencies Program
    I served as project coordinator for this campus-wide initiative, which focuses on helping students gain the digital skills and critical perspectives on technology needed to succeed in the 21st century. As a humanist interested in technology and working in a tech career, I'm especially personally invested in helping undergrads gain confidence in their tech abilities and in appreciating all of the skills they take for granted. This project also gave me the chance to work with incredibly talented colleagues and undergrads across the college and has stretched my web design, copywriting, and project management skills. 
  • Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts
    An initiative of my department at Bryn Mawr College. Each May, I helped run the annual Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference, a forum for sharing all forms of teaching and pedagogy with technology. I also served as editor and coordinator of our blog, which required regular posts about trending topics, new tech, and campus happenings, and maintained a calendar of Philadelphia-area digital scholarship and pedagogy events.
  • Project Manager at the Early Novels Database, a fantastic cataloging/digital project which makes rich metadata and also rich pedagogical experiences for its undergraduate workers.
  • MLA Connected Academics Proseminar Fellow. I was part of the first cohort of this Mellon-funded program, and got to explore PhD careers with a very talented group of people.