Post-Baccalaureate Fellow in Digital Scholarship Olivia Geho Joins Five Colleges of Ohio

Posted on February 9, 2018

The Ohio Five is excited to welcome Olivia Geho, a graduate of Denison University's Class of 2016, as our inaugural Post-Baccalaureate Fellow in Digital Scholarship. Olivia will spend twelve months with the Ohio Five to research and recommend emerging methods and technologies with application to digital scholarship and digital humanities pedagogy on our campuses. She'll be working closely with librarians, faculty, students, and technologists to contribute to new and ongoing projects both inside and outside the classroom.

One of the observations we've made of the digital projects created under the auspices of our digital scholarship grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the key role students have played in many successful projects. Their contributions have been both impressive and varied. These have so far included the development of original software to improve the accuracy of OCRing early French manuscripts, teaching and coaching peers on the use of digital exhibition platforms like Omeka and Neatline, conducting and editing video oral history interviews, and developing open source interfaces for digital exhibits, just to name a few. These are experiences that challenged them to exercise creativity, leadership, and consider their responsibilities as creators of new works in, and through, digital forms.

While a student at Denison, Olivia did a lot of the heavy lifting on a digital project led by Assistant Professor of English Dr. Regina Martin entitled Literature and Professional Life, an oral history project aimed at exploring the the impact of a liberal arts education through the life experiences of alumni from the Denison University English department. Olivia adds, "I am really interested in the digital humanities because there’s so much potential for new types of scholarship. While working with Dr. Martin I wasn’t just learning how to use digital tools (though that was certainly useful on my resume). I was learning how to conduct research and interviews. I was learning about the ways capitalism shapes English departments and their pedagogy. I was learning how to articulate the importance of digital scholarship not just as a tool to help me get a job, but as a new way of interacting with and interpreting stories. The more I read about the work happening in the digital humanities, the more excited I get about the types of projects and questions and critiques the liberal arts can bring to the table."

Olivia will be sharing her reflections on her blog at https://www.digitalolivia.org so please follow her posts to learn more about what she's working on throughout the year. Welcome to the Ohio Five, Olivia!