Sustaining Computational Research in the Humanities
Why did you apply for this internship?
To experience what it's like to apply data science and research to a field outside of computer science. Especially with the chance to work with lecturers and help contribute to their projects.
What do you hope to gain in completing this project?
New experience with talking to project supervisors and fulfilling their requirements over many meetings and demonstrations. This would be very valuable in the workplace when working with clients as a software developer.
Project Overview
In the completion of this project, I helped more than 8 different lecturers on seven different projects using my coding experience to assist those with less technical expertise. These diverse projects covered a wide range of requirements and topics, resulting in interesting data from conspiracy theories to Spanish sonnets.
What were the key results of your research project?
- Working with the humanities has widened my skillset and perspective on how coding can help people.
- Helping over 8 different lecturers in the humanities with a range of computational ability has been an interesting challenge.
- You can never assume knowledge; always make your program /explanations as clear as possible.
- Making clear config / readme files is really important with sufficient documentation on the steps you've taken to complete the project.
How do you feel you have benefited from completing this internship and has it made you consider future career paths?
I feel like my skillset and technical ability has significantly been widened; as a result, I feel much more well-rounded and versed to work with supervisors in a team who may describe a desired outcome but they don't know how to get there.
Working with large datasets has been such a fun and interesting challenge.
I will definitely consider a career in digital humanities in the future.