Are you a graduate student at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln studying in the humanities or related areas? Are you interested in how the digital humanities can further your research and career? Consider applying for the Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship! This is a competitive program funded by the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities and designed to promote student-led DH scholarship and creation.
The program is designed to accelerate graduate students' research, scholarship, and creative production. During the fellowship period, students commit to developing a critical contribution to the Humanities, broadly understood, that depends on digital methodologies for research, creation, and/or dissemination. Students might use the fellowship to kickstart a new idea or to advance an ongoing project. While developing their own work, Fellows also support one another through conversation, critical engagement, and knowledge exchange in a collaborative environment. Fellows must be willing to actively engage with others working in different disciplinary areas and with a range of methodologies. Students are expected to have some experience with the technologies/methods they plan to use and will receive additional support from the program director and members of the CDRH community.
Digital Humanities Summer Fellows receive a stipend to support focus on their project during the fellowship period and have access to hardware, software, and a shared workspace. Fellows learn alongside each other and from faculty and staff in the CDRH and others from the UNL community and beyond. Digital Humanities Summer Fellows are required to spend 20 hours per week in the collaboration space during the first 6 weeks of the fellowship period and to meet weekly during the second half of the summer.
The call for applications usually goes out each January and decisions are made by the end of March. For questions, please contact the Program Director, Carrie Heitman.
2025 Cohort
Graduate students named Center for Digital Research in the Humanities fellows.
April 16, 2025 in Nebraska Today
Silvia Hernández Crispín
MA Modern Languages
Project:
"From Archive to Access: Preserving and Analyzing Elisa Mújica’s Forgotten Influence from Latin American Literature"
Crispín focused on preserving and analyzing approximately 100 critical reviews written by Elisa Mújica.
Aditya Sandeep Ghalsasi
PhD Political Science
Project:
“Paradise Usurped under the Guise of Security: The Chagos Archipelago Sovereignty Dispute.”
Ghalsasi built a digital archive that combines historical documents, maps, curated videos and timelines related to the Chagos sovereignty dispute between the United Kingdom (UK) and Mauritius.
Eunhong Lee
PhD Philosophy
Project:
“Robert C. Solomon Digital Archive: Mapping Emotion, Existentialism, and Ethics”
Lee built an interactive archive focused on the works and philosophical contributions of Solomon—a leading scholar in the philosophy of emotions, existentialism, and business ethics.
Babatunde Okunlola
MA Journalism
Project:
“Saving the Osun River; a Digital Archive of Osun River Pollution Investigations”
Okunlola built a searchable archive of underreported stories and investigations conducted on the Osun River's pollution over the past decade. He also created an online-accessible toolkit to support aspiring environmental journalists.
News:
UNL graduate student documents Nigerian river pollution
November 12, 2025 in The Daily Nebraskan
2024 Cohort
Digital Humanities Summer Fellowships awarded to four doctoral students
May 13, 2024 in Nebraska Today
Akua Agyeiwaa Denkyi-Manieson
PhD English
Project:
“Gold Coast Novels"
Denkyi-Manieson focused on four novels written by African authors during Britain’s colonial occupation, 1821 to 1957. Because of their relative inaccessibility, these novels have been left out of the literary canon. Manieson digitized and made them available to scholars and readers.
Rasaq Malik Gbolahan
PhD English
Project:
“Linguistic Borders: Translating and Amplifying African Women Poets in the Digital Age”
Gbolahan is a Nigerian poet and translator and co-founder of Àtẹ́lẹwọ́, a decolonial project and initiative focused on the Yoruba language. He translated selected English poems of African women poets published in online literary magazines and in print into Yoruba, published them on Àtẹ́lẹwọ́, and commissioned video recordings of those poems that were published alongside the text translations.
Héctor Palala Martínez
PhD Education
Project:
“Kematz'ib' para gritar: Preserving and Integrating Mayan Languages to Enhance Multilingual Literacy in Nebraska K-12 Schools"
Martínez focused on building a digital platform to feature trilingual poetry by Mayan heritage students in Wakefield, Nebraska, aiming to enrich educational curricula and celebrate cultural diversity.
News:
‘We are seen': Giving life to Indigenous languages in rural Nebraska
June 11, 2024 in Nebraska Public Media
Andrea Wagh
PhD History
Project:
“Hidden Histories: Jewish Children in Occupied France, 1939-1942”
Wagh created interactive maps to visually trace the lived experiences of Jewish children and the network of French orphanages that hid them during the Holocaust.
2023 Cohort
Graduate students selected for Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship
May 10, 2023 in Nebraska Today
Samantha Gilmore
PhD English
Project:
“Building a Digital Scholarly Edition of Copway’s American Indian”
Gilmore’s goal was to better understand the diverse marketplace of early American periodicals, prioritize digital inclusion and share the literary contributions of marginalized communities. Gilmore digitized, transcribed, and shared short-lived periodicals from the early nineteenth century.
Makena Nail
PhD Sociology
Project:
“Under Which Conditions Do Books Get Banned?”
Nail used PEN America and American Library Association data and current state legislation to analyze/visualize the banning of books through time in the United States.
Mackayla Kelsey
PhD Education
Project:
“Designing an Emerging Media Arts (EMA) Toolkit for Teachers"
Kelsey built an embodied pedagogical toolkit for teachers across disciplines curious about emerging media arts applications in their secondary and post-secondary classrooms through methods ranging between somatic/kinesthetic, analog art, and digital computation practices.
Hanna Varilek
MA English
Project:
“The BookTok Collective: Building an Interactive Digital Collection of BookTok Content”
Varilek created an interactive platform that organizes and shares BookTok content, credits contributors, and recognizes TikTok as a literacy sponsor.
2022 Cohort
Digital Humanities Summer Fellowships Awarded
April 13, 2022 in Nebraska Today
Digital Humanities fellowships foster transformation
August 2, 2022 in Nebraska Today
Patrick Hoehne
PhD History
Project:
“imPRESSions: Using machine learning to expose and explore bias in Civil War-era newspapers”
Hoehne worked on a project that uses machine learning to facilitate interactive inquiry into the biases and positions of antebellum and Civil War-era partisan newspapers.
Ethan Jensen
PhD Geography
Project:
“Digital Reconstruction of Hallam, NE prior to the tornado of 2004: A study of memory, loss, identity, and the visual heritage environment”
Jensen built a digital immersive simulation of the downtown area of the village of Hallam, Nebraska, as it existed prior to its destruction by a tornado in 2004.
Olufunke Ogundimu
PhD English
Project:
“riot | émeute | randalieren”
Ogundimu built a centralized digital hub that archived protests and agitations for the return of African arts looted from francophone, anglophone, arabophone and lusophone African countries.
Kevin Pflager
MA Geography
Project:
“Confronting Consolidation: Mapping the historic roots of farm consolidation in Lancaster County during the 20th Century”
Pflager worked on a county level examination of the early days of farm consolidation in Lancaster County to show the first couple of snowflakes that became the avalanche of farm consolidation that is destroying farming communities and rural America today.