CDH and PUL partner to offer Princeton researchers grant opportunity to collaborate on humanities data curation

 Miracles of Mary (Tä’ammərä Maryam), Miracles of Jesus (Tä’ammərä Iyassus), f.21
 

This spring, the Center for Digital Humanities (CDH) and Princeton University Library (PUL) are partnering to offer Princeton scholars a unique grant opportunity to transform their humanities research material into analyzable datasets. 

The CDH, an interdisciplinary research center affiliated with PUL that explores how digital methods and technologies open new avenues for research, offers annual Dataset Curation Grants to humanities scholars experimenting with collaborative and data-driven approaches.  

Open to faculty, staff, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students, these grants provide a 12-month affiliation with the CDH to learn best practices for working with humanities data, such as data selection, gathering, modeling, cleaning, transformation, and maintenance. 

The partnership with PUL this year allows grantees to delve deeper into library resources and collections by seeking projects co-submitted by a Princeton researcher and a PUL partner, such as a librarian, curator, archivist, and/or specialist. 

“Teaching critical approaches to data is one of our main goals,” said Natalia Ermolaev, associate director of the CDH. “We’re excited for the opportunity to help scholars across the academic departments team up with librarians to leverage their expertise and showcase the gems in Princeton’s collections.”  

Initiatives such as the Princeton Ethiopian Miracles of Mary Project (PEMM), led by Wendy Laura Belcher, professor in the departments of comparative literature and African American studies, have received support from CDH Dataset Curation grants. Drawing on the Ethiopic manuscripts in PUL’s Special Collections, Professor Belcher is creating a comprehensive resource for Gəˁəz miracle stories written about the Virgin Mary in Ethiopia from the 13th century to present day. 

CDH grants not only give humanists the tools and techniques necessary for creating custom datasets, they also introduce scholars to emerging models of collaborative research in the humanities, from project charters to published data.

“The CDH has provided more than just generous funding to get my project started, or technical support in establishing an innovative database and cataloging tool,” said Belcher, “they have enhanced my vision of what research could be and enabled me to be better at it.”

The deadline to apply is March 2, 2020. For more information about the Dataset Curation Grants, visit the CDH website, attend the information session on February 11, or request a consultation

Written by Stephanie Ramírez, Communications Specialist and Staff Writer

Media contact: Barbara Valenza, Director, Library Communications