Hi, My name is Emma Zhang (she/her), and I’m from China. I’m a sophomore interested in Cognitive Science and Computer Science. Aside from that, I’m a theater person and been doing relevant work on campus. This is my first term working as a DHA. I really like the interdisciplinary nature of digital humanities and how DH projects tell valuable stories, so I would love to be part of these projects.
Here’s a picture of my cat chestnut by me, so no cc license 🙂
For me, I value the experience of working with a team of supporting DH professionals, as I get to develop skills both in and out of the field. I also look forward to investigate into ways we present a story to our audience. My main takeaways from the training are the mindsets DH people have. Just like suggested in Data Feminism, data are more than itself — it can be used to convey stories and meanings. I wish to continue learning and applying the creative mindsets to actual project. Also, I would love to be part of a project visible online, and value invisible efforts put into those websites.
I’m very excited to begin my new role as DHA and look forward to contributing to the team. I am ready to learn from everyone and allow my creativity grow.
Hi all, I am Tori (she/her), a senior majoring in Computer Science and Statistics. I have always had a mixture of humanistic inquiries and statistical reasoning on my academic profile, so I was drawn to the DHA position as it is a natural and promising extension to my interests and skillset.
I am also the owner of a very annoying cat and a very friendly dog as shown below.
I am attracted to DHA position because the prospect of marrying technical skills with my passion for the humanities really excites me. The chance to contribute to the entire lifecycle of a digital humanities project promises a lot of fulfillment for me personally. The learning objectives and this enlightening training process furthered my commitment to the role. I am eager to contribute to and learn from this vibrant community of scholars, educators, and students.
From the training, I learned many insightful theories and frameworks, as well as useful tools that will strengthen my abilities as a DHA and beyond. One of which is Linkedin Learning: not only will it enable me to learn a wide varieties of skills, it can qualify and arm my portfolio with certifications.
I am beyond excited to start my journey as a DHA, and thrilled to be surrounded by this group of encouraging and resourceful peers! 🙂
Hi all, I’m Will Shrestha! I’m from Saint Paul, Minnesota. I’m a senior Computer Science major and Digital Arts and Humanities minor. I worked as a TA for Hacking the Humanities fall and winter terms of the 2023-2024 academic year. Spring 2024 was my first term working as a Digital Humanities Associate after I heard about the job from Austin Mason, the director of the Digital Arts and Humanities department. I got a lot of experience working with a team of faculty and students in a professional setting and learned more about the intersections between computer science and the humanities. This year, I’m hoping to become proficient in at least one new software/tool that will help me in my projects. I’m also hoping to be able to help students learn more about the Digital Arts and Humanities minor as its Student Departmental Advisor.
Some other academic interests I have are music and psychology. I take saxophone lessons here at Carleton and occasionally arrange sheet music for piano on the music composition software, MuseScore. Recently, I’ve been learning more about social psychology in my free time. I’m currently reading Nudge by Richard H. Thaler which is a really interesting book about how choice architecture alters people’s behavior in predictable ways.
My main extracurricular at Carleton is being a member of the Karls, our club level men’s ultimate frisbee team. I play as a D-line handler. I am also member of MOSAIC (Mosaic of South Asian Interests at Carleton), Mixed Club, and Club Tennis.
Some hobbies of mine outside of Carleton are spending time with my pets and playing video games with my friends. I have two dogs and two cats (one cat, Scoop, is living on campus with me as an ESA). Two of my current favorite video games are World of Warcraft and Deadlock. Two of my all-time favorites are Stardew Valley and Minecraft.
Here’s a picture of Scoop in my dorm during junior year!
Hello! My name is Noah and I am from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I am a first-year student interested in Computer Science and Statistics as a major – pursuing a career in software engineering or data science. Aside from computers, I am also interested in History – European history in particular – and I’m also on the swim team here. This will be my first year working in Digital Humanities and I am really excited to work on projects and get to know everyone here. I like making things with computers and solving problems so I hope this position will expand on what I’ve learned in the classroom and improve my skills in the workplace.
I’m interested in data analysis and modeling. With my limited work in stats so far, it has been really interesting to show data in interesting ways and find interesting relationships that people would otherwise overlook. Aside from that, I hope to be able to understand Omeka and WordPress more and be able to make, and help other people, make awesome things.
Aside from that, I like pets and beaches, and I can’t wait to experience my first Minnesota winter. I am also a lifeguard who works at West Gym on Mondays and Tuesdays at 11am so come to West Gym at those hours! Malaysia’s really awesome so if you have any questions about there or really any other thing about Asia or cats feel free to ask me! I have 3 cats – Hiroshi, Leo, and Diana and my girlfriend has like 9 cats so I know quite a lot about them.
Hello! My name is Tonushree and I’m a senior from Mumbai, India. I am majoring in Cognitive Science with a Digital Arts and Humanities minor. When I’m not studying/working, I love creating art, exploring various nooks and crannies of campus and Northfield with my friends, and getting coffee with someone different every week to keep me on my toes. I also enjoy acting in Carleton productions. Apart from being a Digital Humanities Associate, I am also a Costume Shop Assistant at the Theater and Dance department and an Office Assistant for the Psych and Cog-Sci department!
Here is a picture of me soaking up the sun during my study abroad, Studio Art in the South Pacific 🙂
I thrive in settings of interdisciplinarity, where a project, theory, or concept needs to be understood from several different lenses, be it philosophical, sociological, economical, linguistic, or digital to name a few. I’m excited by the fact that being a DHA gives me the opportunity to simultaneously dabble in multiple humanities classes and work on or observe the digitization of their projects. I would love to further my interests in art, storytelling and creative visualization by learning how to turn them into digital projects during my time as a DHA!
Hello! I’m Henry, a sophomore from Minneapolis, MN. Here at Carleton, I’m interested in computer science, cognitive science and economics/public policy. This is my first year as part of the DHA team, and I’m excited to start getting involved in some Digital Humanities projects. While I love the theoretical/technical side of computer science, using these techniques as tools to build interesting projects has always been more rewarding for me than just theory alone. I’m hoping in my role as a DHA, I will have the opportunity to apply my formal knowledge and experience in web design and app building to projects across Carleton’s humanities disciplines.
I’m interested in the process of distilling large amounts of information into digestible analysis. This year, I’m hoping to learn more about how to do this well with digital tools. I’m also interested in learning more about visual storytelling with maps and other interactive web-based experiences.
Outside of school, I love playing music and spending time outside. On campus, I’m a board member for KRLX (our student-run radio station), a software developer on DataSquad, I live in Carleton’s Outdoors House (Wade house), and I can often be found in the climbing gym, exploring the Arb (by ski or foot), or plotting overly complex pranks on my friends.
My name is Cynthia Leng and I am a junior Statistics major from Beijing, China. This is my first year working as a Digital Humanities Associate (DHA), and I am really excited about the interesting projects I will be working on.
I got interested in digital humanities when I started working with the Carleton Archives. My role in the Carleton in China project introduced me to digital tools and content management systems, and I am eager to learn more about them as a DHA.
In my free time, I sing with the Carleton Choir and a Chinese a cappella group. I also enjoy traveling, watching movies, and playing badminton with my friends.
My favorite part of Carleton is that there’s plenty of space to follow curiosity – no matter what discipline the topic falls into. I’m excited to work as a Digital Humanities Associate this year because I love helping other people bring their curiosity to life. Selfishly, I also get to see more cool projects.
As an example, last Spring I began working as a DHA, and I worked on the 3D model viewer for CARCAS, which is an archaeology department project to display high quality scans of bones. The best moment of that project was showing Sarah, the faculty member leading the project, that the mobile version of the site lets you virtually put the bones on real world surfaces around you using your phone camera. She was delighted! I’m so proud that I was part of what made that moment happen, and I’m looking forward to more moments like that this year.
Here I am, holding a goat skull! In reality, nothing was in my hands; this is a feature of the mobile version of the CARCAS model viewer that I worked on last spring. Photograph by Cynthia Leng.
A little bit more about me – I’m a senior, and I’m a math major and digital arts and humanities minor. I love all angles of math, from the beauty and symmetry of abstract math to the nitty gritty computational considerations of working with real data. I also keep coming back to maps across a variety of academic fields, from medieval maps to storytelling maps made in the present day.
I’m looking forward to a great year working as a DHA!
My name is Gaby Lazo, and I am a senior Linguistics major. This term, I was lucky enough to serve as a Digital Humanities Assistant between roles as a Student Teaching Assistant, and what a gift it was! While Digital Humanities projects have been my preferred way to engage with humanities education throughout my time at Carleton, stepping into this role meant stepping all the way back into my freshman self’s shoes, as I worked to revitalize my skills in the DH tools first introduced to me in Hacking the Humanities. And as I reimmersed myself in this work, between writing my Senior comps and captaining the Ballroom Dance Team, I rediscovered my love and passion for DH!
This term, I got to work on three primary projects: classroom Omeka support, digital advertising and revision, and video captioning. Working primarily with MELA 230: Jewish Collective Memory, I supported the onboarding of several new “researchers” onto their course Omeka site. I created new instructions both for adding new users to the site as an admin, and for accessing and activating new accounts. In doing this, we learned that many of the other Omeka resources no longer reflected the newest version of the interface; thus, I also got to update these instructional materials. These tasks together really let me dive back into the different ways Omeka can serve well as a digital archive, and the powerful capability it possesses to support humanities visualization through timelines.
Between compsing and DHA work, Gould Library became my second home this term!
My other two projects related to our annual Day of DH event held each June by our department. Firstly, I supported prep for the upcoming 2023 event by creating new teaser posters for this year’s festivities. This allowed me to become familiar with our keynote speaker, Quinn Dombrowski, and their wonderful work both in making DH welcoming to women, via the Data Sitters Club, and incredible textiles! Further, since the event is returning to in-person this year after several virtual occurrences, I updated some of the materials that will be needed to navigate the Weitz on the big day! In addition to these things, I have gotten to apply my captioning skills to a new project (in a new software) as I added captions to each Lightning Round session video from last year’s event. This has helped hone my attention to detail, and has reminded me of the critical role of accessibility in our department and at our school.
As I return to my TA position, I cannot help but reflect on how grateful I am that Digital Humanities not only thrives at Carleton, but that I got to be a part of it. Our work is a constant learning experience, where we are supported to practice trial and error as we come together to support incredible projects. While my academic career at Carleton is slowly coming to an end, my immersion into the world of DH is just beginning!
My name is Thien M. Bui and I am a Junior CS / Mathematics major at the school. Due to some pronunciation complications, I often go by Kevin which is what most of you *probably* would’ve known me by. I worked as a DHA last year, doing basic Python scripts and WP template maintenance for various departments, and I hope to continually be of use as one of the few resident CS major in the program!
Outside of DHA, I hope to spend more time with the seniors in the townhouse area this year (ALL THE HOUSES HAVE THEIR OWN CULTURE). Because of Covid, I took a gap after freshman year so this will be the last chance I’ll get to kick it with the folks I came into Carleton with. Here’s a cool pic of the area!
Lawn area next to Owens (where I live ;D)
Lastly, since I couldn’t make it to the accessibility training, I’ll instead be talking about Sofia Noble and Algorithm of Oppression instead. Last year, we got lucky and somehow managed to invite her over for our Day of DH where she kind of went ham on how search engine algorithms are marginalizing certain groups (e.g. searching for “black girl” on Google used to return a lot of pornographic materials). She goes into a lot of details in her book on how the problems in a wide range of use cases, and also possible solutions to remedy them. That was a fascinating talk, and I would wholeheartedly recommend everybody interested in AI to give the book a read!
