People
The Scholars' Lab is a collaborative think tank for digital humanities projects. This page contains all the members of our current community which includes staff, student assistants and consultants, graduate fellows, and visiting scholars. Click on any name or image to find more information about each person. To filter this page by collaborator type, click any category button on the menu bar.
If you're a PhD candidate in the humanities or social sciences, and you would like more information about our Graduate Fellows program, please visit the graduate fellows information page.
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Consultants
Bethany Nowviskie, PhD Director, Digital Research & Scholarship Assoc. Director, SCI
Bethany helps shape UVA’s support for digital scholarship by running a Library department that includes the Scholars’ Lab and a crack R&D team devoted to scholarly interfaces. The SLab combines the services and resources of UVA Library’s former GeoStat and Etext Centers with end-user assistance from ITC’s Research Computing Support group. She is Associate Director of the Scholarly Information Institute (SCI), a Mellon funded think tank. Additionally, she is current Vice President of the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH), a member of the MLA's Committee on Information Technology, and is Senior Advisor to NINES, for which she designed the Collex tool. Her doctorate is in English, and she has worked in the digital humanities as a designer, manager, and editor since 1995. Bethany's own research lies in the intersection of traditional interpretive methods with innovative social and algorithmic tools.
(434) 243.2218@nowviskie on twitter
Wayne Graham, MA Head, Research & Development
Wayne leads our R&D efforts, through which we partner with faculty, graduate students, and library staff to reimagine not only the collection of data, but also its interpretation and dissemination. Most recently, he has focused our development efforts on developing an extensible, opensource infrastructure to support geospatial scholarship in the humanities, paying particular attention to lower technical barriers to installing the software and minimizing server and administrative requirements. Wayne holds a bachelor’s degree in History from the Virginia Military Institute and a master’s degree in Colonial History from the College of William and Mary. His research interests include computer graphics, interpretive uses of augmented reality, vernacular architectural history, and the social interactions of the early Virginia frontier.
(434) 924.6265@wayne_graham on twitter
Eric Johnson, MA, MLIS Head, Outreach & Consulting
Bio coming soon.
(434) 243.1940@ericdmj on twitter
Jean Bauer PhD Candidate, Corcoran Department of History Scholars' Lab Fellow 2008/2009
The Early American Foreign Service Database (EAFSD) will allow users to trace the creation and evolution of the U.S. Foreign Service from 1775 to 1825 by recording biographical information on all American diplomats, consuls, and special agents from that period and putting their lives in dialog with each other using a relational data structure that highlights the social, institutional, and epistolary networks they created on a day-to-day basis. The EAFSD is a crucial component of my dissertation, "Through A Glass Darkly: Creating the American Foreign Service, 1775-1825." The database will be written in MySQL with a Ruby on Rails interface and the code will be released under an open source license, allowing other scholars to build their own institutional or social networking databases.
Where is she now?
Find more information about Jean on her personal website at jeanbauer.com.
@jean_bauer on twitter
Jared Benton PhD Candidate, McIntire Department of Art & Architecture Scholars' Lab Fellow 2010/2011
Jared Benton is a Ph.D. candidate in the McIntire Department of Art & Architecture's Classical Archaeology Program. He plans to use GIS mapping and analysis techniques to examine specialization in Pompeii's bakeries as a case study of changes in the Roman economy in the first century CE.
Lee Bidgood PhD Candidate, Department of Music Scholars' Lab Fellow 2007/2008
Bluegrass music in the Czech Republic -- there's a lot of it, and there's a lot of history and variety to the music-making. In addition to participant-observation and other person-level ethnographic work with folks who are part of the Czech bluegrass community, I broaden my work through web-based interactions. My online "Bluegrassová Mapa Ceské Republiky," which is in construction with help from the UVA library and the Bluegrassova Asociace Ceske Republiky will help widen the perspective of my dissertation, indicate the extent of bluegrass activity in Czech Republic to outsiders, and enable new local community and inter-community connections.
Jeremy Boggs Humanities Design Architect PhD Candidate, George Mason University
Jeremy Boggs is the Scholars' Lab's Humanities Design Architect, bringing his excellent design sensibility and enthusiasm for the digital humanities to bear on Scholars' Lab projects. Previously, Jeremy served as the Creative Lead at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, where he strove to promote the best in web standards design. He is also a History PhD student at George Mason University. His research interests include cultural histories of cleanliness and filth in the 19th-century US with regard to physical space and design. His current work focuses on methodologies for using design in digital history. He also researches the history of web design, the history of technology, and US cultural history. On his personal website, ClioWeb, Jeremy blogs about how historians can use the electronic form as a tool for academic and educational expression.
@clioweb on twitter
Elizabeth Bollwerk PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology Scholars' Lab Fellow 2009/2010
Elizabeth will analyze the geospatial patterns of pipe use in early Native American settlements. She will pair her strong archaeological background with a suite of GIS technologies.
Mark Byron, PhD ARC Discovery Postdoctoral Research FellowUniversity of Sydney Visiting Scholar 2009, 2010
Marc Byron is currently an ARC Discovery Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Sydney, where he will take up a Lectureship in 2010. He has taught at the University of Washington, Seattle, and at Cambridge University, where he completed his PhD in 2001. His two current major projects include a digital variorum edition of Ezra Pound’s Cantos and a digital edition of Samuel Beckett’s novel Watt. Part of the latter project – the transcription and digitisation of the text’s manuscript – forms part of the international Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscripts Project, directed from the Centre for Textual Genetics at the University of Antwerp.
Chris Clapp PhD Candidate, Department of Economics Scholars' Lab Fellow 2010/2011
Chris Clapp is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics. The theme that unites his research is an analysis of the effects of public policies on individual behavior. He has previously published research that examines on-the-field success as a justification for the public subsidization of new sports stadia. His dissertation seeks to inform policymakers of the effects of congestion pricing policies on commuter behavior, residential location decisions, and ultimately congestion itself. He is also currently involved in a project that evaluates the impact of public interventions in the lives of local at-risk youth.
Jim Cocola, PhD Scholars' Lab Fellow 2007/2008
In his study of modernist and post-modernist American poetry, Jim used Google Earth and other vernacular mapping tools to create a "mappemunde" of the way poets such as Charles Olson depicted place and how their own home locations influenced their work.
Where is he now?
Dr. Cocola is Assistant Professor of Literature, Film, & Media at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Brian Croxall, PhD Emerging Technologies LibrarianCLIR Postdoctoral FellowEmory University Visiting Scholar 2010
Brian Croxall is Emerging Technologies Librarian and CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow in the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University. He completed his PhD at Emory University in 2008. Since then, he has taught modern and contemporary American literature as well as courses on media studies, digital culture, and war fiction. His current book project, “Discourse Accidents,” investigates the narratological use of technology within the discourse of trauma. Within the digital humanities, his current work focuses on the collaborative representation of time and space. Brian is a contributing author to the blog ProfHacker.
brian.croxall@emory.edu @briancroxall on twitter
Pierre Dairon PhD Candidate, Department of French Language & Literature Scholars' Lab Fellow 2008/2009
Evangeline is a sign which, since Longfellow's poem in 1847, has taken on a life of its own and is now displayed throughout multiple landscapes, supports and discourses. My project aims to find, follow and map these signs to better understand the network of representations that Evangeline inspired.
Where is he now?
More information about Pierre can be found on his home page at Pierre Dairon.
Tom Finger PhD Candidate, Corcoran Department of History Scholars' Lab Fellow 2010/2011
Tom is a PhD candidate in the Corcoran Department of History. Soon after enrolling at UVa, he developed a plan for his dissertation that looked at the ways in which technologies, ecosystems, and human social groups interact over large scale economic systems. As a case study of these relationships, his dissertation highlights the growth of the North Atlantic grain trade between the United States and Great Britain during the nineteenth century. He has found that energy flows regulated by technologies - in his case the grain trade – can go a long way towards explaining how social groups and political movements are formed. To this end, he explores the relationship between classical liberal economic theory, the growth of railroads, and widespread agrarian unrest in the Midwestern United States following the Civil War.
Where is he now?
Find more information about Tom on his page on the Corcoran Department of History website.
Chris Forster PhD Candidate, Department of English Scholars' Lab Fellow 2007/2008
I am attempting to determine the authorship of the late-nineteenth century novel TELENY (a work sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde), through the use of statistically grounded text analysis techniques (also called "stylometric" analysis). The project engages the fields of machine learning and natural language processing, as well as posing the challenge of a quantitative definition of literary "style."
Where is he now?
Visit Chris' web site for more information at cforster.com.
@cforster on twitter
Kathy Gerber, MS ITS Research Computing Consultant
Bio coming soon.
(434) 982.4986
Alex Gil PhD Candidate, Department of English Scholars' Lab Praxis Fellow 2011/2012 Scholars' Lab Fellow 2010/2011
Alex Gil formally works on American literatures and culture, digital humanities and critical theory. His in-progress dissertation revolves around the early work of Aimé Césaire and modernist Caribbean theater. Besides his academic duties, he is engaged as a co-editor for the complete works of Aimé Césaire forthcoming in 2011 from Planète Libre in Paris.
Where is he now?
Visit Alex's web site for more information at www.elotroalex.com.
@elotroalex on twitter
Joseph Gilbert, MA Consultant
Joe consults with Scholars' Lab staff, teaching faculty and graduate students on digital projects and contributes to the web design and development efforts of our department (mostly using XML, XSLT, CSS, Javascript, and Ruby on Rails). He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and Computer Science from Vanderbilt University and a master’s degree in English from UVA. His research interests include the scholarly implications of user interfaces, the ethical claims of American poetic discourse, and the cultural role of poetry in mid-20th-century America.
(434) 243.2324@joegilbert on twitter
Chris Gist, MS, GISP GIS Specialist
For the past six years, Chris Gist has been a GIS Specialist with the University of Virginia Library where his duties include building spatial data collections, teaching GIS courses, and handling all aspects of GIS software user support. Prior to that, he held positions at the University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). Chris has both Bachelor’s and Masters degrees from VCU. His research work includes various demographic, neighborhood indicator, and funding analysis projects in and around Richmond and various environmental science and humanities GIS projects. Chris is a certified GIS professional (GISP).
(434) 982.2637@adarwinian on twitter
Ronda Grizzle, MSIS Outreach & Training Specialist
Ronda Grizzle is the Outreach & Training Specialist for the Digital Research & Scholarship unit. As the outreach person for the SLab, Ronda works hard to get the word out over multiple channels to UVa faculty, staff, and students about all the great training workshops, luncheons, and events hosted in the SLab. Ronda is a librarian with 18 years of experience in library database and systems administration, technical support, technical training and class design, and customer service. When she's not at work, Ronda can usually be found entertaining her nine year old Cardigan corgi, reading a great book, or planning her next trip.
(434) 924.3965@rondauva on twitter
Jo Guldi, PhD Harvard Society of FellowsMellon Postdoc in Digital History, U. of Chicago Visiting Scholar 2010
Jo Guldi (PhD History, UC Berkeley, '08) is a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows and teaches digital history at the University of Chicago. Her first book, The Necessity for Infrastructure (Harvard University Press, 2011) documents the rise of the modern infrastructure state in the building of Britain's interkingdom highway network between 1790 and 1835. Her blog, (In(land)scape has handled several aspects of the rise of digital publishing and research. Various podcasts and short videos on landscape history from eighteenth-century Britain to present-day Detroit may be found at archive.org. Her current project is a history of the nation-state told through landscape and its contestation, from seventeenth-century land reclamation to countercultural utopias, hinging upon the international history of the land reform movement.
landscapestudies@gmail.com @joguldi on twitter
Gabriel Hankins PhD Candidate, Department of English Scholars' Lab Fellow 2011/2012
Gabriel Hankins is a PhD candidate in English Language and Literature, specializing in transnational modernism and new approaches to modeling distributed textual networks. Gabriel's dissertation project investigates the idea of world government in fiction from 1919-1945, from Wells's "Modern Utopia" and Huxley's "Brave New World" to little-known "League of Nations" novels. His Scholars' Lab project, "Mapping Global Modernism," employs relational database technology and GIS visualization to collaboratively model and query the networks of letters, editions, presses and manifestos which underpin claims about the global reach of twentieth-century literary modernism. He welcomes collaborators on that project: write to hankins [at] virginia.edu.
Abby Holeman PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology Scholars' Lab Fellow 2008/2009
My research asks how cosmology informs hierarchical relations in non-state societies. Focusing on the site of Paquimé in Chihuahua, Mexico, I use GIS to study intra-site distributions of artifacts and architectural features. I assess what the patterning of artifacts and architecture can tell us about prehistoric belief systems and social organization.
Where is she now?
For more information about Abby, please visit her people page at SHANTI: Abigail Holeman.
Wendy Hsu, PhD Department of Music Scholars' Lab Fellow 2009/2010
Wendy is interested in Asian-American indie rock culture and its depiction in new media. She will employ a series of web APIs for music and social networking sites in her research.
Where is she now?
Wendy is currently a Mellon postdoctoral Fellow at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA. You can also find more information about Wendy at her website, beingwendyhsu.info.
@wendyfhsu on twitter
Barbara Hui, PhD Programmer/AnalystUC Humanities Research Institute Visiting Scholar 2010
Barbara Hui received her PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA where she is completed a dissertation entitled Narrative Networks: Mapping Literature at the Turn of the 21st Century. She is also programmer/analyst at the UC Humanities Research Institute and has worked extensively as a developer on Hypercities and the Danish Folklore Mapping Project.
barbara.hui@gmail.com @barbarahui on twitter
Ray Johnson, BIS Scholars' Lab Coordinator
Ray Johnson is the Scholars' Lab Coordinator. He's the guy who's responsible for overseeing the day-to-day activities of the SLab: maintaining and writing technical documentation for Lab staff and users, reserving rooms, making sure workstations are up and running. At the desk, Ray helps users with software questions, scanning & OCR questions, distributes software, and provides triage for user's requests for help, making sure that the right expert is called in to assist. In addition to his work in the SLab, Ray works at the Albert & Shirley Small Special Collections Library receiving and vetting digitization requests and preparing materials for scanning, primarily in support of faculty teaching and research activities. Ray holds a Bachelors degree from UVa, specializing in business. When he's not busy in the SLab, Ray enjoys spending time with his friends and family, and traveling.
(434) 243.8800
Ryan Johnson Student Assistant PhD Candidate, Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese
Bio coming soon.
(434) 243.8800
Kelly Johnston, MS GIS, GISP GIS Specialist
Kelly helps shape the direction of digital scholarship at UVA in his role as Scholars’ Lab GIS Specialist consulting across academic disciplines with faculty, students, and staff on the application of geospatial technologies for research and teaching. Kelly teaches GIS methods classes at UVA in Environmental Sciences and Public Health, leads GIS workshops, and supports the broad university GIS community. He earned the MS in GIS from Indiana University and the GISP professional certification in GIS. His research interests include geographic information science and cartography.
(434) 243.4242@KellyGJohnston on twitter
Nancy Kechner, PhD ITS Research Computing Consultant
Bio coming soon.
(434) 924.0911
Charles Kromkowski, PhDSocial Science Data LibrarianResearch Associate Professor of Politics
Randi Lewis PhD Candidate, Corcoran Department of History Scholars' Lab Fellow 2011/2012
Bio coming soon.
Brooke Lestock PhD Candidate, Department of English Scholars' Lab Praxis Fellow 2011/2012
Bio coming soon.
Erin MayhoodUX Consultant
Erin Mayhood is the User Experience Librarian at the University of Virginia where she leads efforts to improve both in-person and online experiences the Library delivers to faculty and students. As leader of the Library’s first-ever User Experience Team, she has developed a user-centered design process that champions a collaborative, data-driven approach to service planning and development. She coordinates and/or conducts all necessary assessment to inform user-centered design activities including user profiles, user interface requirements, task analysis, cognitive walkthroughs, focus groups, and usability testing.
(434) 924.7017
David McClure, BA Web Applications Specialist
David graduated from Yale University with adegree in the Humanities in 2009, and worked as an independent web developer and communications consultant in San Francisco, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, before joining the Scholars’ Lab in 2011. David is the creator of Public Poetics, a platform for online poetry discussion that experiments with non-standard ways of organizing web-based commentary and annotation.
At the Scholars’ Lab, David is working on the Omeka + Neatline project and pursuing research projects that explore the idea that software can be used as a tool to inform, extend, and advance traditional lines of inquiry in literary theory and aesthetics.
(434) 243.3603@clured on twitter
Matt Munson PhD Candidate, Department of Religious Studies Scholars' Lab Fellow 2009/2010
Matt is working on Biblical and other contemporaneous end-time accounts. He plans to apply text mining techniques to uncover previously unknown patterns and connections among early apocalyptic literature.
Where is he now?
Matt is currently the Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the Göttingen Center for Digital Humanities, DARIAH Arbeitspaket 2, Forschung und Lehre.
Mark Nevin ABD, Corcoran Department of History Scholars' Lab Fellow 2007/2008
Mark Nevin studied the history public opinion polling during the years of Richard Nixon's presidency.
Lindsay O'Connor Department of English Scholars' Lab Praxis Fellow 2011/2012
Bio coming soon.
Rebecca Peters, BA Administrative Assistant
Becca Peters has a Bachelors degree in History and Social Anthropology from Purdue University. She has been at UVA for 17 years, working in several departments before coming to Digital Research and Scholarship/Scholars’ Lab in 2008. Becca is the administrative wizard of the team, making sure appointments are scheduled, reimbursements are processed, and event guests are fed. When she’s not at work, Becca spends time with her husband and two young children, Fiona and Aidan.
(434) 982.4889
Gillian Price Student Assistant PhD Candidate, Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese
Bio coming soon.
(434) 243.8800
Eric Rochester, PhDSenior Developer
Eric is an accomplished computational linguist and digital humanities scholar and developer, with a PhD in English from the University of Georgia. He has held positions at the Oxford University Press and Georgia's Linguistic Atlas projects, as well as a consultancies and programming positions at a number of technology firms.
(434) 243.3603@erochest on twitter
Sean Ryder, PhD Head, Department of EnglishNational University of Ireland, Galway Visiting Scholar 2008
Sean Ryder received his PhD from University College Dublin. He teaches film studies, American poetry, critical and cultural theory, and Irish writing. His research interests include 19thC Irish culture and politics (with a particular interest in the works of Thomas Moore, James Clarence Mangan, and cultural nationalism), and the theory and practice of textual editing. He is currently project leader for TEXTE (Transfer of Expertise in Technologies of Editing), a research and training programme in textual editing with new technologies funded by EU 6th Framework Programme, and is also project leader for the Thomas Moore Hypermedia Archive, a hypermedia archive and critical edition of the works of Thomas Moore, funded by Irish Research Council for Humanities and the Social Sciences. He a former director of the multi-disciplinary MA in Culture & Colonialism. He has published on various aspects of 19thC Irish nationalism and culture, and on Irish cinema.
Adam SorokaConsulting Engineer
(434) 243.8644
Scott Spencer PhD Candidate, Corcoran Department of History Scholars' Lab Fellow 2009/2010
Scott will apply database and text mining methods to his study of colonial police forces in British Imperial South Africa to investigate the demographic qualities and personal lives of the men who composed these forces.
Where is he now?
Find more information on his page on the Corcoran Department of History website.
Dana Stefanelli PhD Candidate, Corcoran Department of History Scholars' Lab Fellow 2007/2008
Dana employed a range of GIS tools in his study of the early Washington D.C. real estate market. By georectifying historical maps and plotting land value and other data, Dana was able to drawn new conclusions about the efficacy of L'Enfant's plan for the nation's capital.
Where is he now?
Find more information on his page on the Corcoran Department of History website.
Sarah Storti Department of English Scholars' Lab Praxis Fellow 2011/2012
Bio coming soon.
Joanna Swafford Department of English Scholars' Lab Praxis Fellow 2011/2012
Bio coming soon.
Edward Triplett PhD Candidate, McIntire Department of Art Scholars' Lab Praxis Fellow 2011/2012 Scholars' Lab Fellow 2011/2012
Edward graduated from the University of Delaware in 2001 with a dual major in medieval history and photography. In January of 2001, he moved to Savannah, GA to begin an MFA in three-dimensional graphics and interactive media. After completing the program in 2004, Ed taught graphic design at Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland before returning to the University of Delaware's history program where he studied Medieval History under Prof. Daniel Callaghan and museum studies under Prof. Bryant F. Tolles. Ed graduated with an MA in Architectural History from the University of Virginia in 2008 where he wrote his masters thesis, The Resurrection of the Military Order of Calatrava Through the Construction of a New Capital under the guidance of Prof. Lisa Reilly. During this time, Ed also began working on a wide variety of historical visualization projects for UVA's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. He is currently working on several 3D architectural Visualizations for this institute. Ed is currently ABD in the History of Art and Architecture Department at the University of Virginia. His dissertation will expand upon his master's thesis by looking more deeply into several fortresses, monasteries and churches constructed or adapted by military orders in Spain during the 12th through 14th centuries. This project will take him to Spain for several months in Spring 2012 with the assistance of the Kress Travel Fellowship. He is also currently a graduate fellow of the Scholar's Lab at UVA where he is designing a database and GIS mapping project to help sort the hundreds of buildings associated with military orders in Iberia.
Jennifer Van Student Assistant Department of Mathematics
Bio coming soon.
(434) 243.8800
Dana Wheeles PhD candidate, Department of Art History Scholars' Lab Fellow 2007/2008
Dana relied her experience with XML and XSLT to create an online repository and exhibit of visual depictions of the enigmatic Lucrezia Borgia.
Where is she now?
Dana is the NINES Project Administrator in the UVa Department of English.
@bluesaepe on twitter
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