Scaffolding Digital Humanities Growth through Teaching & Research Pipelines

Abstract

Digital Humanities (DH) centers come in all shapes and sizes, from one-person operations with minimal resources to larger teams with dedicated staff. Many centers continue to wrestle with questions of relevance and sustainability, two aspirations that are often at odds. Centers that register in the middle range—enough resources to make ripples but not enough to scale—are well-positioned to explore a pipeline model that offers scaffolded, staged pathways that build sustainable, permeable competencies in DH research and pedagogy. These pipelines also support cross-institutional partnerships, which strengthen a shared knowledge base and extend communities of practice beyond campus boundaries. The Institute for Digital Arts & Humanities (IDAH) at Indiana University Bloomington developed programs and approaches that follow a pipeline model with an emphasis on capacity-building via curriculum, skill acquisition, and increased support for graduate students. This presentation will provide an overview of the IDAH pipeline model and illustrate a working example of this model following the “journey making” methodology.

*A version of this presentation was given as part of the 2020 Annual Meeting for the Association for Information Science and Technology.