Welcome to CESTA

At CESTA, students and faculty combine the power of humanistic investigation with new technologies to document, analyze and understand the changing human experience.

CESTA 2025 Summer Undergraduate Research Program Applications Are Open!

The applications for the 2025 CESTA Undergraduate Programs are open! CESTA Undergraduate Programs is your gateway to cutting-edge exploration at the intersection of technology and the humanities.

Reflections on the Digital Humanities

A Stanford Arcade and CESTA collaboration

Articles and interviews of digital humanities practicioners and professors at Stanford. Curated and edited by Charlotte Lindemann (Stanford PhD Alum).

2024 CESTA Research Anthology is Out!

The capstone for our interns is the submission of a research report under the supervision of their project leads. The Anthology brings together these reports, offering a student's-eye view on the work

Introducing our Taxonomy of DH Methods and Approaches

Read about a unique feature of our new publications page: a taxonomy of methods and approaches which can be used to filter our publications

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Featured Project

The Senegalese Slave Liberations Project, led by Professors Richard Roberts, Joel Cabrita, and Fatoumata Seck at Stanford, Babacar Fall and Ibrahima Seck in Senegal, and Rebecca Wall at Hamilton College, together with Joshua Goodwin at Stanford and Erica Ivins at Columbia University, is investigating slavery and  freedom in  19th-century West Africa.

How is humanities research transformed in a digital age? How can we harness the power of digitization in order to recover, preserve, and curate cultures and cultural artifacts? Like no other place on campus, we work across the boundary typically separating the humanities and technology, asking essential questions about the future of humanistic thought.
Giovanna Ceserani
Faculty Director

EVENTS

February
18
Date
Tuesday, February 18, 2025. 12:00pm - 1:15pm
Location
Building 160, Wallenberg Hall
450 Jane Stanford Way, Building 160, Stanford, CA 94305
Room 433A
February
20
Date
Thursday, February 20, 2025. 10:00am - 12:00pm
Location
Building 160, Wallenberg Hall
450 Jane Stanford Way, Building 160, Stanford, CA 94305
Room 433A
February
25
Date
Tuesday, February 25, 2025. 12:00pm - 1:15pm
Location
Building 160, Wallenberg Hall
450 Jane Stanford Way, Building 160, Stanford, CA 94305
Room 433A

NEWS & BLOGS

The 2024 CESTA Research Anthology is out! Every year, several dozen Stanford undergraduates from a broad range of majors and minors join the CESTA community as research aides and researchers.
CESTA is thrilled to announce the launch of the Digital Humanities Graduate Student Professionalization Program! This unique opportunity invites graduate students to develop hands-on experience in Digital Humanities (DH) through a structured framework of learning, mentorship, and collaboration.
Each year, undergraduate students participating in CESTA's research programs—whether through the Undergraduate Research Aides Program in Winter and Spring or the Undergraduate Research Program in Summer—design and present posters that highlight the findings and significance of their research projects.
Throughout my time with CESTA, I've had the opportunity to learn and work on many different things that I'm interested in, such as working with historical documents, coding music analysis programs, and graphic designing for the anthology. In each project I've been a part of, it has been exciting to see how much technological innovation has to offer for humanities research, and how interdisciplinary study can enhance collaboration from people with different backgrounds and perspectives.
Kiana Hu
Undergraduate Research Intern

CESTA is open to all persons concerned with the study and teaching of digital humanities, in that field’s most capacious definition. Our Center welcomes researchers and interested participants from all walks of academic life, including, but not limited to, faculty and academic-related staff, postdoctoral fellows, graduates and undergraduates, independent scholars, and technological experts. We aim to encourage an environment of collegiality and collaboration, diversity, inclusion, and academic freedom for all participants.

We explicitly affirm the right of students and junior faculty to receive supportive, professional mentoring that respects their intellectual freedom and personal integrity. We expect anyone coming to CESTA, or representing CESTA, to abide by and promote these values so that together we may build a stronger, more welcoming, considerate, and equal community.