Last month, a team of six staff from the Civic Initiative (a business group of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Donahue Institute) were in Islamabad. They held a three-day follow-up conference for alumni from recent cohorts of the Study of the U.S. Institutes Comparative Public Policymaking program that has been held annually by the Civic Initiative since 2010. The SUSI program is funded by the US Department of State Education and Cultural Affairs Office.
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Digital Humanities Training and Exchange
North Carolina Central University (NCCU) and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC, CH) ran a series of digital humanities training and exchange programs led by Matthew Cook. These programs were designed in two parts, the first taking place in Pakistan in March 2019 and the second in North Carolina in May 2019.
Part one of this program sent five scholars from the US to Pakistan for one week in March 2019 (March 9 to 17). There, the scholars taught and mentored faculty in both Islamabad and Lahore. Faculty from UNC, CH taught introductory courses in Geographic Information Systems, Natural Language Processing, Python, GIT, HTML/CSS, Digital Preservation and Digital Cultural Heritage. Professors from NCCU mentored faculty from Pakistan in small groups on how to integrate these digital humanities skills into their classrooms.
Part two of the program took place in the US and was sponsored by UNC, CH’s Carolina Asia Center. Five Pakistani scholars from part one of the program attended the Triangle Digital Humanities Institute (May 20 to 24, 2019). This program provided participants from Pakistan with supplementary digital humanities training and advice on planning, creating, and sustaining projects. The US mentors then helped the Pakistani participants (re)develop their courses/syllabi to include more comprehensive digital humanities components.
The Bull City Doc Squad at NCCU produced a short video highlighting the Digital Humanities Exchange program. Check it out to learn more about the program from the scholars themselves!
US Scholar Bios:
Matthew Cook is a professor at North Carolina Central University where he works with South Asian and Postcolonial Studies. Cook’s research focuses on the historical and linguistic anthropology of South Asia, Sindh, and colonialism.
W. Russell Robinson is an Associate Professor in Media Studies at North Carolina Central University. Robinson’s research concentrates on intersectionality, specifically along the lines of race, gender, class and media representation.
Collie Fulford is an Associate Professor of English Composition and Rhetoric at North Carolina Central University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in academic, professional, and civic writing.
Michele Ware is an Associate Professor of English at North Carolina Central University. She has served as the Associate Dean of the (then) College of Liberal Arts and as Chairperson of the Department of Language and Literature. Her research interests include American literature, the American short story, and American women’s political Poetry.
Brett Chambers is a lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication at North Carolina Central University. Chambers’ research fields include digital humanities, multimedia storytelling, media entrepreneurship, media technology innovation, and digital/media literacy.