Intern Spotlight: Lily Nilipour

Lily Nilipour

Lily is a rising sophomore majoring in English Literature and minoring in Creative Writing. This summer she is working with the Chinese Railroad Workers Project, which seeks to uncover the untold stories of the Chinese workers who labored on the Transcontinental Railroad, and make available the archival sources so others can continue research on the migrants’ experiences. She is helping with identifying relevant historical articles on microfilm, as well as with building an online repository for archival items to increase access to scholars.

She came to CESTA because she originally didn’t have any experience in Computer Science but she knew she wanted to get introduced to it and its potential to offer new ways of understanding. What excites her most about digital humanities research is its potential to do just what the Chinese Railroad Workers Project does – discover and make known stories of people that were previously never taken into consideration. The field creates new forms of storytelling that offer different and engaging perspectives.

Working on her project has helped her realize how research in hum really works. She’s gotten to see even though her project is in its final stages how much work has gone into it to get it to this stage.

She may not know what her future plans are, but she is exploring different humanities areas and learning as she goes. Outside of CESTA, Lily can be found at tennis practice (or avoiding it), writing, or doodling cats.