The Digital Innovation Lab officially launched on October 10-11

To mark the occasion, Brett Bobley, Director of the Office of Digital Humanities at the National Endowment for the Humanities, joined us to engage in campus- and community-wide conversations about public digital humanities.

Bill Andrews introduces the Digital Innovation Lab

Bill Andrews, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, began the launch by introducing the Digital Innovation Lab and speaking about the need for innovation in the humanities. Brett Bobley followed with a public lecture in Hyde Hall about the current state of the digital humanities, where DH might be headed, and how researchers can get involved. View his slideshow: Bobley Talk.

Following this talk, we hosted a smaller roundtable discussion about the Promise of Public Digital Humanities. The Lab demonstrated several of its [intlink id=”109″ type=”page”]projects[/intlink], while other participants shared their work in public digital humanities at UNC. The conversation continued over dinner later that evening.

Brett Bobley talks about the digital humanities

Brett Bobley discusses the creation of UNC's Digital Innovation Lab

Brett Bobley talks about recent funding trends for DH projects.

Tim Shearer, of the University Library, poses a question to Brett Bobley

John McGowan of the IAH welcomes area faculty to a roundtable lunch with Brett Bobley

The next day, faculty had the opportunity to meet one-on-one with Brett to discuss their project ideas. We continued this over a boxed lunch with area faculty, in which scholars were each given the opportunity to pitch their ideas.

Finally, Brett visited Robert Allen’s [intlink id=”107″ type=”page”]AMST 890 Digital Humanities/Digital History[/intlink] graduate seminar to discuss career paths in the DH. Students were given the opportunity to pitch their class-based projects to Brett in a five-minute elevator talk.

Students in Bobby Allen's Digital Humanities graduate seminar pitch their project to Brett Bobley in a mock elevator talk

We hope that this is the start of a series of ongoing and lively conversations about public digital humanities. Look for information about future events here on our website soon.

Special thanks to the Institute for the Arts and Humanities for co-hosting and co-sponsoring our launch.

Victoria Szabo of Duke's Greater Than Games Lab talks about the divide between new media and digital humanities