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Introducing CESTA's Winter/Spring 2022 Interns

Introducing our Winter/Spring 2022 Interns, a hybrid community of digital humanities researchers.

The Center for Textual and Spatial Analysis at Stanford runs undergraduate research internship programs in the winter, spring, and summer quarters.  Our undergraduate interns contribute to faculty projects while acquiring new skills that are consolidated in workshops and activities designed for the internship program. During Winter and Spring 2022, a majority of this work is being done remotely, while some interns started joining us in person at CESTA. Our interns continue to advance digital humanities research and creating a unique community of researchers at Wallenberg Hall. You can read below about our current cohort of interns and their work. This program is supported by two graduate mentors: Merve Tekgürler, a PhD student in History, and Annie Lamar, a PhD student in Classics.

We’re grateful to the many campus partners who support our research and programs, including colleagues at Stanford University Libraries and the Stanford Humanities Center.  Our Undergraduate Research Internship program receives generous support from a VPUE Departmental Grant. Some projects and interns at CESTA are also supported by Cultivating Humanities and Social Sciences Grants and the Stanford-Tinker Faculty Research Fund.

Intern bio project

Pauline Arnoud

Pauline Arnoud is a junior majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Education. She worked with Nelson Endebo, Fyza Parviz, and Ellis Schriefer on the EpicConnect project to build a website to help foster collaboration and community amongst community college professors. She is passionate about using technology to make education more accessible and enjoyable.

 

EpicConnect

Nikita Bhardwaj

Nikita is a sophomore majoring in Symbolic Systems with interests in Digital Humanities, Linguistics, and Computer Science. She worked with Prof. Elaine Treharne and Dr. Mateusz Fafinski on the Medieval Networks of Memory project where she learned about computer vision methods and female literacy in thirteenth-century England.

Text Technologies

Nicholas Clark

Nicholas is a graduating senior with a major in Mathematical and Computational Science and a minor in Classics. In his work on the Grand Tour Project, he has pursued new ways to detect and represent meaningful connections within the project’s dataset, such as family trees for travelers. Nick is passionate about the human deep past and excited to apply his technological knowledge to advance its study.


 

Grand Tour Project

Fiona Clunan

Fiona is a sophomore from Virginia majoring in Classics and International Relations with a minor in Modern Languages. She is currently working with Professor Grant Parker on projects relating to South Africa and in particular its Dutch colonial period. Outside of CESTA, Fiona is involved in the Society for International Affairs at Stanford and the Aisthesis Classical Journal.

 

Visualizing Trials Of Slavery At The Cape

Niloufar Davis

Niloufar is a freshman from London studying History and Political Science. She chose to work on this project because she has an acute interest in gender history and has worked on Computer Science research in the past, and so this project gives her the perfect opportunity to merge her CS and gender history interests.

Panic & Pandemic 

Julie Fischer

Julia is a sophomore from the Chicago area planning to major in Mathematical and Computational Science and minor in Psychology. This Winter and Spring, she is working as an RA in the Text Technologies lab at CESTA. Outside of CESTA, she is involved with Stanford's Innovative Styles contemporary dance group and Women in Computer Science. Text Technologies

Shannon Gifford

Shannon is a junior from Seattle, Washington. At Stanford, she studies history, archaeology, and creative writing, and is ultimately interested in different forms of storytelling. Otherwise, you'll find her swimming, running, or searching for new trails to explore.

 

Mapping Shared Sacred Sites

Kiana Hu

Kiana is a senior studying Classics and Archaeology. This year, she is working with Professors Jesse Rodin and Craig Sapp on the Josquin Project to refine digital music analysis tools that can be used to identify unique elements of Renaissance music composed by Josquin des Prez, as well as generating visual plots within the program.

Mapping The Musical Renaissance 

 

Margot Hutchins

Margot is a freshman interested in public policy, mathematics, philosophy, and any and all interdisciplinary connections. She's enjoyed combining her love for the humanities with her passion for STEM through work in the digital humanities at CESTA.

 

Grand Tour Project

Ronit Jain

Ronit's work primarily centers around Digging Deeper, a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) offered by Stanford that aims to make studying medieval manuscript accessible to anyone interested. However, the MOOC had to go offline due to an incompatibility with a new online platform that was being phased in. My work focuses on building out a new platform that would house the MOOC content using both Spotlight and digital assets contained in the Stanford Digital Library. I first aggregated, organized, and cataloged course materials, which consisted of diverse media ranging from instructional videos to manuscript images to practicums. My next task was to figure out how to organize the material into modules so that it would make the most pedagogical sense. To this end, I considered different spatial arrangements of text, embedded video, and images to determine which best facilitated comprehension and navigation ease. Finally, I prepared the site for its imminent launch which I hope will make the study of medieval manuscripts widely available in an interactive, easy-to-digest, and user-friendly interface. 

Text Technologies

Junah Jang

Junah (she/her) is a sophomore from the Seattle area majoring in Public Policy. She is excited by applications of data science to social issues, and looks forward to learning in this realm from the CESTA community! Outside of school, she loves live theater, gardening & hiking, well-organized spreadsheets, and good tofu recipes.

 

Obelisks Of South Africa

Natasha Johnson

Natasha Johnson is an undergraduate at Stanford University, studying in the Music and Symbolic Systems departments. 

Literary Lab

Salma Kamni 

Salma is a sophomore at Stanford University studying Product Design with an interest in Data Science. Currently she is working with Professor Hans Bork on the Social Networks in Roman Comedy.

Social Networks In Roman Comedy

Moe Khalil

Moe is a rising senior majoring in Computer Science. He has been working with OpenGulf on the Historical Texts as Data Project since early 2021. His role involves building Optical Character Recognition models to automatically transcribe handwritten Arabic texts as well as digitizing and publishing open-source historical texts from the Arab Gulf.

 

OpenGulf

Emir Kirdan

Emir is an undergraduate at Stanford University, studying in the departments of Economics as well as Math and Computational Science. Stanford University Archaeological Collections: Women In Provence

Feiyang Kuang

Feiyang is a sophomore interested in Comparative Literature, History, and Philosophy. She enjoys reading, boxing, and anything creative.  CESTA Chinese Archive Project & Massively Multiplayer Project

Arethea Lim

Arethea is sophomore majoring in Art History and Psychology. She's passionate about preserving stories and legacies of those who have passed, keeping their history and culture alive. She's a strong believer in the integration of arts and sciences, and sees psychology as a way to analyze how we understand the world and art as a way to shape our understanding of the world. On top of her academic interests, she's a visual artist and pursues painting and design work.

Warhol's Photo Archive

Brittany Linus

Brittany is an undergraduate student pursuing a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and Notation in Cultural Rhetorics. You can catch her walking through Main Quad with a speaker in her hand! It's always on and blasting music, especially the theme songs to the new shōnen anime she's watching! African Archive Beyond Colonization

Srihari Nageswaran

Srihari is a sophomore studying Comparative Literature. For the 2021-22 school year, he was an intern at EpicConnect through CESTA. He worked primarily on the site's UX/UI design, using Python and user interviews in conjunction with Stanford's EPIC fellows for EpicConnect's spring launch.

 

EpicConnect

Jocelyn Quintero 

Jocelyn Quintero is a junior pursuing a double major in Symbolic Systems and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity to further understand the intersection between technology and racial/social justice. She is currently working under Life in Quarantine: Witnessing a Global Pandemic, a research project focused on producing a public archive of global experiences regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Jocelyn love to watch movies, spend quality time with friends, and listen to people's stories.

EpicConnect

Sarina Rye

Sarina is a freshman currently interested in Sociology and Earth Systems (but even more interested in exploring new subjects each quarter). In their free time, Sarina often writes poetry, plays her ukulele, and Facetimes her aunt and cat back home in Sacramento.

Senegalese Slave Liberations Project

Hasan Tauha

Hasan is a sophomore transfer student majoring in religious studies with an interest in early Islamic history. His CESTA project is lead by Dr. Michael Penn, who specializes in early Christian-Muslim relations. Hasan's interest in Dr. Penn's research stems from the manner in which it problematizes entrenched narratives about early Islam, such as the idea that there was an immediate clash between Christians and Muslims. Hasan hopes to conduct similar research in the future but with a focus on historical questions subversive of the narratives of Islamic orthodoxy.

Social Networks In The Early Islamic World

Natalie Wang

Natalie is a freshman at Stanford University and is currently interested in Symbolic Systems, law, and classical literature. Outside of CESTA, she is also a member of Stanford’s Theater Lab, and has experience in creative writing and legal research.

Modernist Archives Publishing Project

Camellia Ye

Camellia is a junior, double majoring in English and Economics. Her interests are quite divided across disciplines, including environmental economics and justice, early modern and renaissance literature, creative writing, and Chinese and Japanese novelists. On campus. she's involved in the Stanford Symphony Orchestra (she plays cello!) and Stanford's Storytelling Project. Her hobbies include running, skateboarding, listening to math rock and BTS, watching anime, and testing the limits of a rice cooker

Oral History Text Analysis Project

Charlotte Zhu

Charlotte is an undergraduate student at Stanford University (25'). She is passionate about the humanities, arts, and cultures. She is curious to explore as well as eager to contribute to community. CESTA Chinese Archive Project & Massive Multiplayer Project