Past fellows in the Humanities Digital Workshop have successfully pursued academic and professional careers growing from the experience and skills developed in working on HDW projects. Read about some of our fellows below.
Shelby Carpenter worked on the Spenser Project in the Humanities Digital Workshop in 2009. She recalls she was, as an IPH major with a focus on Renaissance drama and literature, "excited to go to work each day on creating a groundbreaking edition of Spenser's corpus. I had the chance not only to learn about Spenser but to think outside the box on publication, both print and digital." Shelby now works as a law clerk for an attorney in Anchorage, Alaska, a job she loves "because I am getting hands-on experience in the legal field and receiving a great deal of mentorship from my employer, Charles Evans." In the fall of 2012, she will begin studies at New York University School of Law, after which she plan to become a public interest lawyer.
Cecilia Razak started her professional career with the Spenser Project in her sophomore year, and graduated to become full project manager in the Humanities Digital Workshop as the Post-Baccalaureate Fellow. In her capacity as project manager for the Spenser Project, she worked between coders, students and professors as a liaison, created and managed a large amount of data, trained workers, and even worked on a successful grant proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities. After her tenure at the Spenser Project, Cecilia took the digital humanities skills she had acquired and moved to Philadelphia to become a web designer and content strategist. She currently works with content, web design and marketing for Bluecadet Interactive, a firm that designs dynamic websites and interactive display installations for museums, universities, and non profit organizations.
Channah Rubin held fellowships in the Humanities Digital Workshops throughout her undergraduate career, working closely on the Spenser Project and developing her own digital edition of Britain's Ida for her senior thesis. After graduating in 2010, she taught middle school English in New Haven, Connecticut. She now works as a researcher putting on neuroscience conferences for educators in Boston and plans to apply to graduate school in the following year. "My experience at the HDW was invaluable," says Rubin. "It taught me autonomous research skills and gave me the opportunity to contribute to a large and exciting collaboration. It helped me to understand scholarly pursuits and left me with a deeper understanding of the early modern era, as well as the wealth of issues surrounding editorship."
Jonathan Shelley is a fourth year graduate student in English at UC Berkeley. He has encoded texts for the Spenser Project and was the Post-Baccalaureate Fellow in the Humanities Digital Workshop from 2007-2008. He is currently teaching an undergraduate composition course titled "Outer Space" which covers prose, poetry, and drama about the cosmos from Ptolemy to Milton. "The Humanities Digital Workshop gave me my first comprehensive glimpse of the microcosmic and macrocosmic aspects of a long-term scholarly projects," says Shelley. "Working in the HDW and its projects not only develops the analytical skills familiar to the classroom but also gives extensive perspective into the editorial, technical, pedagogical, bibliographical, and logistical tasks that are pertinent to a scholar. It's a place to get your hands dirty and make significant contributions to scholarly work as an undergraduate and graduate student."