The Digital Innovation Lab happily welcomes new members to our growing team.

Bryan Gaston, a first-year Master’s student in Information Science at the School of Information and Library Science (SILS), joins us as our new Lab Associate. He studied Sociology, Religious Studies, and Music during his undergraduate career at UNC.  Afterward, he ran a computer consulting business and worked briefly in Financial Aid.  He is interested in innovative GIS applications and interface design.

We are also pleased to welcome Donovan McKnight as our new Lab Affiliate. Donovan is Program Associate and Website Manager at the North Carolina Humanities Council. Before joining the Council in 2008, he earned a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. After graduation in 2005, he taught high school English and Creative Writing. McKnight is a current Masters candidate in the Liberal Studies program at UNC Greensboro.  He is co-director of the nonprofit Face to Face Greensboro, a community-based organization that creates public events geared toward person-to-person interaction and collective enlightenment through conversation. McKnight is also co-director of Spare Room, an artist-run initiative that nomadically facilitates opportunities in open spaces for emerging artists, makers, and thinkers. He is also co-director (along with Lee Walton) of the Super G Experiential Residency Program set in the flea market area of an international supermarket in Greensboro, NC.

Donovan will work with us to develop new public digital humanities projects. As we work together, he will build capacity for digital public humanities work at the NC Humanities Council. Together, we hope to expand the reach of public digital humanities across the state.

From left: Charlotte Fryar, Christopher Breedlove, and Beth Carter

We also welcome three new undergraduate students, all graduates of Robert Allen’s Fall 2011 AMST 350: Main Street, Carolina class. Christopher Breedlove is a Sophomore studying Exercise and Sport Science and American Studies; Beth Carter is a Junior majoring in Exercise and Sport Science and History; and Charlotte Fryar is a Sophomore focusing on American Studies.

We look forward to working with the newest members of our team!