Workshop Details
The DH@Guelph team is thrilled to announce the 2025 Summer Workshops, which will take place in person in the McLaughlin Library at the University of Guelph from May 12th- 15th.
All workshops are four-days in length and therefore each participant can only register for one workshop. Please explore the workshop options below, then head over to our Eventbrite page to register.
All workshops take place in the McLaughlin Library at the heart of the beautiful University of Guelph campus.
The DH@Guelph Summer Workshops are proudly partnered with the new Canadian Certificate in Digital Humanities (CC:DH). Click here to find out more information.
The workshops available in 2025 are:
1. Using Play as a Design Approach to Create Exploratory Digital Archives [this workshop has been cancelled]
2. Digital Editions, Start to Finish [this workshop has been cancelled]
3.Visualizing Data in the Humanities: From Concepts to Creation
Instructors: Diana Duarte Salinas
Location: TBA
Description: Data visualization is a powerful tool for uncovering patterns, telling compelling stories, and communicating complex ideas in ways that transcend traditional text-based formats. This workshop is designed for humanities scholars and professionals interested in exploring how data visualization can enrich their research, teaching, and public engagement efforts.
Over the course, participants will learn foundational principles of data visualization, explore a range of tools suited for humanities projects, and engage in hands-on exercises that emphasize practical application. Whether you are new to data visualization or seeking to refine your skills, this workshop will equip you with the knowledge and confidence to create meaningful and visually impactful representations of your data.
Intended Audience:
This workshop is open to humanities scholars, educators, librarians, and students interested in integrating data visualization into their work. No prior experience with data visualization is required.
4. Digital Misogynoir and Harm Reduction Tactics
Instructor: Dr. KáLyn Coghill
Location: TBA
Description:
This course engages in a critical examination of the distinctive challenges encountered by Black women within the digital sphere, attributed to the convergence of misogyny and anti-Black racism, collectively referred to as misogynoir. Participants will investigate the historical context, manifestations, and repercussions of misogynoir in online settings. Through comprehensive case studies, interactive discussions, and contemporary examples, students will attain a nuanced understanding of the experiences of Black women in digital spaces, as well as how online platforms can serve to both perpetuate and contest misogynoir. This i aims to cultivate awareness, encourage critical thinking, and stimulate discourse regarding equity and inclusion in the digital era.
Additionally, the course scrutinizes the development and impact of digital activism, concentrating on the manner in which social media platforms empower grassroots movements that advocate for gender, sexuality, and racial equality. Students will evaluate how online platforms challenge oppressive systems, amplify marginalized voices, and foster community involvement. By analyzing cases such as #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, and #SayHerName, the course delves into the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality within the context of online advocacy. Furthermore, it assesses the efficacy and limitations of hashtag activism in effecting social change. Students will explore concepts such as digital Black feminism, intersectionality, and media literacy while refining their critical thinking and ethical engagement capabilities.
Intended Audience:
Digital humanities scholars, digital librarians, social scientists, activists, organizers and people interested in trust and safety online and digital resistance.
5. Intro to Minimal Web Design with Jekyll
Instructors: Chelsea Miya and Ryan Chartier
Location: TBA
Description:
In this workshop, you will learn how to build lightweight static websites using the Jekyll static site generator. We will walk through the theory and practice of minimal computing, a “needs based” back to basics approach to web design using free, open-source tools (Risam and Gil 2022, Sayers 2016).
In recent years, there has been growing interest within the digital humanities in exploring sustainable ways to publish and share research online. In comparison to Content Management System – platforms for creating and editing websites such as Wordpress and Drupal – static websites are more secure, require little to no maintenance, and far less computing power to sustain. While platforms make it notoriously difficult for users to export their data, static sites are also easy to archive and store offline. For these reasons, static site generators can be a more sustainable and low-cost alternative.
In this workshop, we will cover:
- Minimal computing as critical praxis
- Installing Jekyll
- Using Collections Builder, a Jekyll-based add-on, to create a digital collection; as well as best practices for archival metadata.
- Customizing the layout and design using CSS stylesheets
- Creating and editing content with Markdown
- Experimenting with more sophisticated layouts using Liquid templates
- Deploying the site to GitHub Pages
- Other options for static site generators, such as Pelican and Astro, and how to choose between them
Over the course of the workshop, participants will work on creating a digital collections website, or another website of choice such as a: research exhibit, event page, online cv, personal blog, online journal or zine, or wiki. At the end of the week, you will have the chance to share your projects with the group and get feedback.
Experience with HTML, CSS, and the basics of using the command line is recommended but not required.
Intended Audience:
Researchers, students, and staff who are interested in building websites.
No prior web development experience is necessary, but some basic knowledge of HTML and CSS is helpful.
6. An intensive introduction to the Guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative
Instructor: James Cummings and Diane Jakacki
Location: TBA
Description:
This workshop is an intensive introduction taught in a way that both those who are absolute beginners to digital markup and the guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) or also those with a little bit of experience (but needing a refresher) will be able to complete it. No previous experience with XML or TEI markup is assumed, and introductions to both of these will be provided as part of the workshop. The TEI Guidelines are the de facto standard for recording our interpretation of historical texts for research through digital markup. Although the very general TEI Guidelines are used for many purposes, this workshop will be customised to the interests of the participants attending through a pre-workshop questionnaire, but starts with the assumption that you are likely interested in creating digital editions of historical texts. This workshop will explain the XML (Extensible Markup Language) format and the vocabulary of the TEI through both lectures and practical hands-on exercises completed by participants. The workshop will provide a basic level of introduction to those modules of the TEI which are most popular and useful to participants. It will also train participants to be able to customise the TEI framework for their own projects. Participants do not need to provide their own materials as the exercises will use pre-prepared texts, however you will be encouraged to consider how you might apply what you have learned to your own materials. Participants will be sent instructions to install the Oxygen XML Editor (with a free trial licence) on their own laptops, though other software options (such as LEAF-Writer) will be briefly demonstrated as part of the workshop.
Intended Audience:
Beginners, but those with some very limited TEI experience who want a refresher could also benefit.
7. Approaching Media Archaeology from a Digital Humanities Perspective: Introduction, Tools, and Techniques
Instructors: Arun Jacob and Paula Sanchez Nuñez de Villavicencio
Location: TBA
Description: This workshop enables participants to examine the ways in which media archeology works as an effective research methodology for Digital Humanities (DH) scholarship, as its simultaneous focus on larger media infrastructures, such as globalized corporate entities networking with nation-states, alongside the detailed histories and bureaucratic materials generated by specific media technologies and their data structures, make visible and legible the production and circulation of power within contemporary networks of media technologies. Extending from DH scholars such as Alan Liu (2012; 2013) and Matthew Kirschenbaum (2013), this course examines how media archeology is crucial to reckoning with the historical and ongoing targeting of marginalized and vulnerable individuals and populations, in particular those who are racialized and gendered, and sourcing what Ezikiel Dixon-Roman calls “hauntings” (2017) of technical progress, funding, data practices and other historical trajectories within contemporary media technologies.
As outlined by Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, media archaeology is cross-disciplinary and nomadic, and its nimbleness and tolerance for multi-pronged analysis allow for a greater understanding of digital media’s “interactivity, navigability, and digital representation and transmission” (3; 2012). This flexibility and simultaneous attention to the invisible and visible, material and immaterial, make it well suited to understanding the particular data-driven algorithmic processes that define contemporary digital media and DH scholarship. The genealogies of power revealed through media archeologies, resulting from rival technologies vying for control, trace how the hegemon came to be, and ascend to the pole position of the socio-technical apparatus (Monea and Packer 2016). Media archeologies understood thus enables DH scholars to engage in inter-/cross-disciplinary conversations with scholars in science and technology studies, philosophy of science, DH and other disciplines.
Intended Audience:
This course is intended for a wide audience interested in learning about media archeology as a digital humanities method to approach questions of knowledge and power. We welcome undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty to explore techniques of analyses that integrate digital humanities tools with historical research.
Instructors: Kim Martin and Kiera Obbard
Location: TBA
Description:
This course will introduce participants to a feminist praxis of making through a combination of theory and praxis. Over four days, participants will read and discuss a variety of texts related to feminist making, across topic areas including weaving, poetry film, zine making, and cross-stitching, and then apply these learnings with hands-on maker activities. In each activity, the digital will be represented in either the mode of creation (i.e., via a digital platform), or in the final output. Through this approach, participants will learn to apply creative analytic practices to their engagement with feminism, data, and the digital. This course will also discuss how these approaches can be implemented into pedagogy. At the end of the workshop, participants will have a collection of artistic objects (some digital, some material) and, to draw on Ahmed’s feminist toolkit, a new feminist maker toolkit of both theory and praxis for using creative outputs for speaking on feminist issues, raising dissent, and surviving together in challenging times.
Intended Audience:
The intended audience are creative practitioners, faculty, students, or anyone wanting to learn to implement their creative practice into research and pedagogy. Participants of any skill level can attend the workshop.
Made your decision? Head over to our Eventbrite page to register!