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Digital Forays Workshop Series
Six public workshops held before class each week during Spring 2021, each featuring guest speakers working at the intersection of digital technology and Middle Eastern studies.
Part of the Kevorkian Center's year-long Digital Forays series. A guest from each workshop joined the first hour of the seminar (2–3pm).
Digital Data Gathering & Changing Ways of Knowing I: Witnessing + Proof + Human Rights
How do digital data gathering capabilities change what we can know, prove, and remember? Researchers and activists working with open-source data, satellite imagery, and citizen documentation explore evidence-building in the age of disinformation.
Digital Data Gathering & Changing Ways of Knowing II: Social Media Afterlives
At a moment when Americans are glued to TikToks, Tweets, live streams, and social media posts capturing unfolding events, this session examines how these digital records are being saved, aggregated, cross-referenced, processed by computer vision, and preserved as evidence.
Space & Place I: Critical Mapping & Counter-Cartography
Critical mapping as practice that presents maps against dominant power structures. Scholars, practitioners, and activists discuss digital spatial practices that disrupt narratives and illustrate collaborative, counter-, and alter-mapping initiatives across the region.
Space & Place II: Visualization & Digital Storytelling
How do scholars and activists use infographics, data visualizations, and novel digital storytelling techniques to explore lived experience and flip imaginations of space and place?
Future Digital Research on/in/from the Middle East
A roundtable examining the present conditions and future (5–10 years) of digital scholarly research on, in, and from the Middle East — including collaboration infrastructure, institutional acceptance, and the perils and promise of funding.
Lightning Talks: Junior Scholars Present Digital Scholarship in Progress
Through an open call, PhD/MA candidates, junior faculty, and independent scholars presented developing digital projects that push the norms, boundaries, and forms of Middle Eastern scholarship through new tools, methods, and modes of dissemination.