Poetic Media Lab

The Poetic Media Lab is a digital humanities research and design group. We design and build creative platforms and products that promote new ways of conducting research, teaching, and learning in the 21st century.

Screenshot from Lacuna Stories, showing annotations of the Margaret Atwood novel "Oryx and Crake"

Participatory and collaborative sensemaking of complex phenomena is central in today’s information-rich world. The critical thinking and close reading skills at the foundation of humanistic inquiry are well suited to support forms of sensemaking commensurate with the unique challenges of our century—but exploring connections or contradictions between texts can be challenging when those materials are digitized or involve other kinds of media. However, we in the Poetic Media Lab understand that the interactive options within digital platforms can be purposefully designed to encourage and steer the development of cross-media analytical skills as well as valuable active competencies such as reflective reading through annotation and critical marking.

In our research and design work, the Poetic Media Lab addresses these urgent pedagogical and educational challenges. Our interdisciplinary lab includes faculty, staff, graduate, and undergraduate students from the humanities, computer science, and the School of Education.

Poetic Media Lab website