What is the Undergraduate Summer Fellowship in the Digital Humanities?

The goal of this program is to support undergraduates who want to conduct humanities research that integrates innovative digital tools and methods.

Students interested in learning about a range of digital humanities research skills–such as mapping, text analysis, digital storytelling, or network analysis–and prototyping their own digital project have the opportunity to apply for a Undergraduate Summer Fellowship in the Digital Humanities!

Selected students will receive a fellowship to participate in workshops, conduct research, and design a digital project during the summer.

Fellows are paired with a mentor in the UCI Libraries, who will help them think through the integration of technology and research based on the skill sets most suited to their project. At the end of the fellowship period, students will present their work in a showcase.

Check out the Digital Humanities Guide to learn more about DH theory and practice and for an overview of DH methods, tools, and resources!

Fellowship Period: Generally begins in June and runs for ten weeks; can be done virtually.

Eligibility: Current UCI undergraduate students enrolled in a Humanities major.

Application: Information about the Summer 2025 program will be posted in early spring quarter.

Josh Chan, 2023 USFDH Program Participant
		I was inspired to pursue this project because of my personal relationship to the subject and it gave me an opportunity to explore narratives and questions from the field of humanities that I have been interested in for the last few years. This program has equipped me with new tools to help me better engage with the humanities, specifically in regard to efficient research techniques and new ways of presenting research narratives. Going forward, the lessons I have taken away from this program will prove to be a solid foundation as I further explore humanities research and telling cultural stories. I believe this opportunity would prove to be invariably beneficial for all students who participate as it not only enables them to pursue topics they are interested in that might not be covered in the classroom but will also help them expand their view on a field that has, more likely than not, been presented in a narrow fashion for much of their life.

Program History

2022
The inaugural program in 2022 was sponsored by a generous donation to UC Irvine's School of Humanities, and co-directed by Professors Deanna Shemek and Yong Chen and Research Librarian for Digital Humanities, History, and African American Studies, Tatiana Bryant. The four inaugural fellows were:

Dee Richards, English major
Topic: The Mark of the Minotaur Twitterbot

Jonathan Ripetoe, English major
Topic: Double Consciousness Twitter Data Visualization

Rehana Morita, Film & Media Studies and Asian American Studies major
Topic: Undocumented Students of UCI Podcast

Ruth Belay,  African American Studies major
Topic: Black Student Activism at UCI Oral History Collection

2023
The 2nd annual UC Irvine Undergraduate Summer Fellowship in the Digital Humanities was generously sponsored by a donation to UCI's School of Humanities and was codirected by Deanna Shemek, Yong Chen, and Madelynn Dickerson, Head of Digital Scholarship Services at UCI Libraries. This year two undergraduate students in the School of Humanities had the opportunity to learn about digital humanities tools and research methods, develop a hypothetical project plan, and then build a prototype sample. The two fellows were:

Josh Chan, English major
Topic: Explored the culture and history of Japanese Americans in Hawaii through Shirokiya, a local grocery store

Jennellee Samkhem, Comparative Literature major
Topic: Studied Cambodian music with a focus on pop music during the wartime period.