We’re championing opportunities for our students to engage with students from a diversity of disciplines and countries, as well as learning from academics from international partner universities. Ours is a truly global approach, unlimited by traditional boundaries and dedicated to opening up innovative opportunities for all.

Since 2018, our Digital Humanities Lab has been collaborating with the University of British Columbia (UBC), supported by Exeter’s Global Partnerships initiatives, the College of Humanities, UBC’s Excellence Fund and its Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies.

Led by Profs. Karis Shearer and Emily Murphy at UBC Okanagan, and Dr. Charlotte Tupman at Exeter, the collaboration has led to the creation of two undergraduate training courses in digital skills and exploratory digital workshops. We’ve also developed a student exchange to mentor students in research into digital archives and to invite public engagement.

The Partnership Development Program involved faculty members and one undergraduate intern from each institution undertaking an exchange in which the teams developed digital resources for the undergraduate classroom. This collaboration has led to the creation of two jointly created self-paced training courses in audio digitisation and text encoding, which are available to students at both institutions to further their digital skills.

The text encoding course is already being used in UG modules at Exeter and UBC-O, giving students an introduction to the fundamental concepts of encoding a text for digital publication. The team is now working on expanding the course with a component that will enable students to develop more advanced encoding skills through guided hands-on practice.

The collaboration has been strengthened and extended with an investment by the University of Exeter and the University of British Columbia in a new student exchange called “Press Play! Research Creation, Arts Entrepreneurship, and The Digital Archive”.

Students at both universities will be funded to research the universities’ digital resources and given the opportunity to undertake a two-week exchange. Students will also be mentored to devise and stage a public-facing exhibition that invites meaningful engagement with digital archives from the wider community. Student projects will explore an aspect of digital archives, considering issues such as race, gender, sexuality, disability or class, to suggest new ways in which digital materials can support public engagement with these topics.

Preparations for Press Play have also produced a joint conference paper delivered last year at UBC-Vancouver's Digital Humanities: Collaboration conference. Exploring collaborations made possible through digital humanities initiatives, the paper addressed challenges and opportunities involved in enabling undergraduates to undertake digital research with international partner institutions.

The Exeter Digital Humanities-UBC partnership has also successfully brought together researchers from different disciplines to undertake joint research in the future and has created the potential to involve PGT students in a translation project based on a major digital resource being developed at UBC by Prof. Francisco Peña.

Prof. Peña visited Exeter under a Visiting International Academic Fellowship in February 2020, and following a workshop hosted by the Digital Humanities Lab, is driving discussions to provide an opportunity for students to gain experience in translation by working on the first English translation of the medieval Spanish text General e Grand Historia.

Please contact Dr Charlotte Tupman for further information:
C.Tupman2@exeter.ac.uk
(0)1392 72 4243