On November 29, the DSI hosted its first graduate student community-building event of the 2022-2023 academic year: an informal research share at which DSI certificate students Grace Wilsey and Marisol Fila presented their practicum projects. For those who couldn’t attend, I caught up with Grace and Marisol, who answered a few questions about their respective research projects and experience presenting.
Grace Wilsey; Department of Film, TV, and Media; PhD Candidate
Q: What is your practicum project?
I worked as an intern for an acquisitions editor at the University of Michigan Press helping to launch the Digital Culture Books series. My responsibilities included researching and sending invites to form the editorial board, reading book proposals, reviewing peer review responses, and prepping acquisitions proposals. It was an informative and valuable experience which helped to demystify the publishing process.
Q: How has doing a DSI practicum project benefitted your dissertation research and writing?
Though this practicum was not directly related to developing my research, I found the experience very helpful from a professionalization perspective. Working on the DCB series taught me a lot about current research in the field of digital studies and about adapting a digital studies dissertation to apply for publication with a series like it.
Q: What was your experience presenting your practicum to the DSI community? What ideas or inspiration did you get from presenting that you plan on incorporating into your project?
We had a small turnout at the event, but this was nice in that it allowed the attendees to talk about their own potential projects. The presentation turned into an enriching conversation. My internship is now concluded, but I did save links to a lot of digital humanities resources which I am sure will be helpful for future projects.
Marisol Fila; Department of Romance Languages and Literatures; PhD Candidate
Q: What is your practicum project?
Since my first year in the PhD program, I have pursued training and practice in digital studies and digital humanities methods and tools. But one internship experience at Enslaved.org/MATRIX (Michigan State University) that I did in the summer of 2020 was especially influential. During that summer, I worked closely on standardizing a dataset about liberated Africans from Rio de Janeiro in the 19th-century. With this project, I was able not only to learn and experiment with different digital humanities tools, but to also connect all the work with my research project. My work throughout the summer involved not only working with the dataset, but using data as a means by which to tell fuller and richer stories of enslaved and liberated individuals from 19th-century Rio. As such, I developed a series of open-access and interactive visualizations of the stories and histories of the Free Africans of Brazil, like a Twitter and YouTube series, StoryMaps and timelines that connected the lives of these individuals to the larger historical events of Brazil. I am now a research assistant for the project and I am working on a series of podcasts that builds on the work done over these past two years.
Q: How has doing a DSI practicum project benefitted your dissertation research and writing?
In many ways! My dissertation is designed around multimodal and multilingual inquiry, discovery, and analysis across traditional text-based analytical exposition and digital storytelling. This mixed method of delivery explores how multimodality and technology can change the experience of informing research in a dissertation and invites the reader to interact actively with the project via a socially-engaged and transmedia approach.
Q: What was your experience presenting your practicum to the DSI community?
What ideas or inspiration did you get from presenting that you plan on incorporating into your project?It was a great experience! I enjoyed the possibility of not only getting to know about other fellow graduate students’ research and practice, but to also get questions and feedback on my project. I also appreciated the chance to brainstorm new ways in which the DSI community can connect with and benefit the work and interests of grad students and fellows. I definitely look forward to having the chance to participate in future DSI events and hands-on workshops.
