I am pleased to say that we applied to Carleton University’s internal Multidisciplinary Research Catalyst Fund for funding to lay the groundwork to transfrom the X-Lab from ‘virtual’ into something much more real - and we got it!!
Who are the ‘we’ in this? There’s myself and Jen Evans from History; Laura Banducci from Greek and Roman Studies; Stephen Fai, Mario Santana-Quintero, Johan Voordouw from Architecture; Monica Patterson from the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies; Alan Tsang, Ahmed El-Roby from Computer Science; Carmen Robertson from Indigenous and Canadian Studies; Tracey Lauriault and Sandra Robinson from Journalism and Communications; and Erik Anonby from Linguistics and Language Studies.
Phew This year has been challenging, to say the least. At the same time, a virtual lab should be well positioned to handle the challenges of working remotely, right?
Nevertheless, many of our projects moved to the back burner, while our undergraduate members dealt with the transition to fully online education and taking care of themselves and their families. Other things that had been in the process of becoming for some time finally saw the light of day.
An Idea It occurred to me that there are many student and faculty digital history projects going on around the History Department, but we do not actually speak to one another formally about this work. There are haphazard meetings in hallways and corridors going to and from class, but no real place where people could talk about their work, share resources, hints, tips, kvetch or otherwise collaborate. I thought then I might try to create a virtual space for that to happen; this is the result.