Introducing Digital Scholarship 1: Digital Storytelling, Counter Narratives and Design Fictions 

Date: 1 October 2024

In the first installment of this two-event series, learn more about the interdisciplinary, multifaceted, and emergent approaches to digital scholarship from our 2024 Graduate Residency cohort.

Storying Disability: Digital Community Archives as Public Memorial at New York’s Craig Colony for Epileptics – Katie Waring

My project seeks to understand patient experiences with institutionalization at the Craig Colony for Epileptics in Sonyea, New York. As the first such institution for disabled people in the United States, the Craig Colony occupies an important role in disability history, yet little attention has been paid to the experiences of the patients forced to live there. This project integrates oral histories with survivors alongside archival research and photographs into an interactive digital map for users to explore and navigate using the design tool Vev. In this presentation, I will showcase the map and discuss the possibilities digital storytelling can offer as a strategic practice of remembrance in unearthing disability history, as well as how such strategic practices can help advocate for new and better futures for disabled communities.   

Katie Waring (she/her) is a multimedia writer and doctoral candidate in the Communication, New Media, and Cultural Studies program at McMaster. Her research aims to understand the potential for community-engaged digital storytelling in highlighting suppressed histories. She holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh and her creative work has been published in literary journals such as The Normal School and American Literary Review, among others. She’s originally from New York State.   

“The Exotic Amazon and The Exotic Woman”: Practicing Refusal Through Digital Counter-storytelling – Andrea Vela Alarcón

My project aims to be a creative digital intervention presenting illustrated AR vignettes and questions reflecting the gendered relations shaped by the long history of resource extraction in Iquitos (Peru). This project departs from the framework of refusal, a concept and practice rooted in Indigenous and Black thought. Refusal exposes and rejects the histories, knowledge production practices and relations of oppression taking away our subjecthood. However, refusal is also a creative outlet embracing the “possibility of living otherwise” (Campt, 2019). This presentation showcases three AR vignettes enacting a creative refusal by being a tool and entry point to explore the gendered violence and colonial resource extraction in Iquitos. I will discuss the possibilities digital counter-storytelling open as a process and site of political action exposing and unmasking non-innocent histories legitimizing resource extraction’s gendered violence of Amazonian girls and women. 

Andrea Vela Alarcón (she/her/Ella) is a community educator, illustrator and doctoral candidate in Communication, New Media, and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. Her academic, creative and pedagogical practices are rooted in anti-colonial approaches and feminist care ethics to facilitate spaces of critical conversations and creation geared toward a world beyond extraction. Through her work, Andrea collaborates with communities in the crafting of stories that center refusal and resistance for environmental justice. 

Fostering Creative Confidence: Reframing Ambiguity Through Storytelling and Design Fiction – Fatima Nazir

As part of my ongoing work, I have developed a workshop that empowers students from various disciplines to build ‘creative confidence’ through storytelling and by reframing ambiguity in ways that foster excitement and joy in learning. This workshop, within the context of Design Thinking education, helps students view ambiguity as an opportunity for innovation rather than discomfort. I will discuss how design fiction—a method that creates story worlds in which prototypes explore discursive spaces—facilitates this shift. Participants redesign everyday objects to reflect future scenarios or alternate realities, imagining futures that encompass technological, social, and cultural narratives. With prompts, collaborative prototyping, and reflective discussion, the workshop fosters creativity, risk-taking, and comfort with ambiguity across various fields.

Fatima Nazir has a multidisciplinary background in applied psychology and human behaviour and is pursuing graduate studies in Engineering Design (Product Design). Passionate about storytelling and human-centered design, her work in research, design, and collaborative projects aims to create inclusive spaces that place people’s stories at the heart of product decisions. Her work spans from reimagining learning experiences and fostering creativity in education to advancing co-design practices in engineering and healthcare to address systemic challenges and improve outcomes.

Let’s Talk! Academic Podcast Entanglements – Milica Hinic

My graduate residency project for the Sherman Centre is a podcast series titled, The Academic Podcast Entanglements. It is composed of 8 episodes of in-depth conversations with transdisciplinary academic podcasters from Humanities and Social Sciences. My presentation will focus on the ways faculty, staff, and students use podcasting as a method within knowledge mobilization systems. I will discuss the many ways podcasts engage individual or collective knowledge brokers such as academics, researchers, students, community members, organizations, etc. Through these critical conversations the academic podcast amplifies the values and tensions of: (1) lived experiences (2) co-creation of meanings (3) and building relationships. The goal is to share what we know, what we don’t know and make spaces for new ways of doing podcasting in our digital futures.  

Milica Hinic (She/Her) is an MA student in Communication and New Media at McMaster University. Her research interests include podcasting and knowledge mobilization in higher education and beyond. She finds innovative ways of sharing information and connecting knowledge brokers across diverse fields, institutions, organizations, and communities. As a result, she co-designs projects from beginning to end and co-creates meaningful project outputs that generate social impact. 

Details: This virtual workshop will be recorded and shared on the same page, and discoverable via the Sherman Centre’s Online Learning Catalogue.