On February 11, 2022, we held a discussion of how to conceptualize and plan a digital humanities project, led by DH Initiative faculty members Andrew Goldstone, Francesca Giannetti, Paul Israel, Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan, and Sean Silver. The workshop was especially aimed at graduate students planning to apply for a Digital Humanities Seed Grant (due March 1). A video recording of the session is available here.

The workshop handout is reproduced below, together with a few additional notes on other resources and example projects (include past seed grant recipients) mentioned in the discussion.

Key considerations

  • What is the research question? What story do you want to tell?

  • What are your methods? What do you already know how to do? What do you need to learn how to do?

  • Who is your audience? Who do you seek to address or involve?

  • How does your project address, extend, complement, or correct an existing scholarly conversation—about the topic, about the methods?

  • Where are the materials or the data? Are they already digitized? Do they need to be created? Can you work by reusing or enriching existing materials or data, or must you create data from scratch?

  • Are there existing tools or platforms that could be used to address your questions? Could you develop a novel tool if what is available “off the shelf” is not suitable?

  • What would success look like? What will the finished project be? What are your practical goals for a small-scale, one-year “seed” project?

Some guides

From discussion: examples

From discussion: more resources and further training