GCDI Conversations in Digital Scholarship
A Symposium Hosted by the GC Digital Fellows

May 13, 2025 from 2 – 4 PM

Register here on a first-come-first-served basis by April 29, 2025 to participate. 

Please note that the registration process has been updated: we are no longer asking participants to complete an abstract in advance of the event. Instead, each participant will share a 3-4 sentence reflection on their interest in the roundtable topic while registering. These blurbs will be shared with all roundtable participants in advance of the event. Registration information which is no longer required has been struck through below.

The GC Digital Fellows are hosting a seminar featuring roundtable discussions on topics related to digital scholarship and methods. These sessions will be held concurrently on May 13, 2025, and are designed to generate a lively exchange of ideas that will cultivate a community of practice around shared digital methods and foster future collaborations. Each roundtable is designed to be a conversation among 8 participants and two facilitators.

Participants are invited to sign up for roundtables on a first-come, first-served basis. Each participant will write a brief abstract of 250-500 words (due April 29), which they will post to a private blog for the seminar. Submissions can include links and references to digital projects at any stage of development. Participants are responsible for reading all the abstracts for their roundtable in advance of the event. During the roundtable, GC Digital Fellows will facilitate discussion and conversation in which all participants respond to one another’s contributions. The purpose of the seminar is to get feedback and input, provide insight and context to others, and foster a broader conversation about the variety of digital tools, methods, and approaches students are using that can be shared with the wider GC community.

Students, faculty, and staff across the Graduate Center are invited to participate. 

Roundtable topics: In its inaugural year, six topics have been developed and proposed by the GC Digital Fellows, a cohort of doctoral students who support the development of technical skills to compliment, extend, and Manifold Fellows. The purpose of the conversations are to enhance the scholarship and teaching of faculty, students, and staff at the CUNY Graduate Center. Topics include: AI for Qualitative Research, Digital Archives, Digital Methods in Languages Other Than English (LOTE), Educational Game Design, Open Pedagogy on Manifold, and Working with Open Government Data. See below for the full prompts. 

Process: Register for the seminar-style roundtable portion of our symposium by completing the registration form and selecting the title of the seminar roundtable you would like to participate in (descriptions of each below) and sharing a brief, 3-4 sentence reflection on your interest in the topic. Once registered, participants will receive an email explaining how to post their abstracts on the GC Digital Fellows Spring 2025 Symposium website. Contributions will be due April 29th at noon.

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AI for Qualitative Research
Facilitators: Parisa Setayesh and Silvia Rivera Alfaro

Artificial intelligence is increasingly shaping the ways researchers collect, analyze, and interpret qualitative data. AI-powered tools can automate coding, accelerate thematic analysis, and expand accessibility by lowering the barriers to advanced computational methods. At the same time, these technologies introduce critical concerns about bias, transparency, environmental sustainability, and the potential de-skilling of researchers. As AI becomes more integrated into qualitative research, how can scholars navigate its benefits while mitigating its risks?

This roundtable invites scholars who are engaging with AI-driven qualitative research to discuss the following questions:

• How can AI assist in qualitative research without compromising human interpretation and nuance?
• What are the ethical concerns surrounding AI-driven analysis, particularly regarding bias, privacy, and transparency?
• How do open-source tools like Taguette, Weft QDA, and AcademiaOS democratize access to AI-driven research methods?
• What are the environmental and infrastructural costs of AI, and how should researchers account for them?
• What skills do scholars need to engage with AI tools critically, and how can they balance automation with meaningful intellectual labor?

Participants are encouraged to share insights, experiences, and strategies for integrating AI tools into their research while maintaining methodological rigor and ethical responsibility. The discussion will emphasize both practical applications and critical reflections, fostering a dialogue on the evolving role of AI in qualitative research.

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Digital Archives
Facilitators: Maggie Schreiner and Stefano Morello

Across disciplines, many of us rely on digital archives to find primary sources, organize our research materials, and present our findings. Digital archives, like all collections, are artificial creations, reflecting the availability of primary sources, technologies for transforming and digitizing materials, the use of descriptive taxonomies, the knowledge systems that inform their architecture, and more. In this roundtable session, participants will discuss how they have navigated decisions in using and creating digital archives, with an emphasis on resource sharing and collaborative support.

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Digital Methods in LOTE (Languages Other Than English)
Facilitators: Tuka Al-Sahlani and Chen Zhou

Most digital humanities and computational work is in English. We will discuss the creation, development, application, challenges, and execution of methods, tools, and projects that utilize Languages Other Than English. Participants are encouraged to discuss their involvement in digital methods that use LOTE. This includes how they encountered these projects, the tools used for these projects, and specific methodologies that address the language hegemony in DH work. Participants interested in digital methods  in LOTE are encouraged to bring their curiosities about doing DH work in LOTE. The panel will be a place to discuss, share, and support DH work in LOTE.

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Educational Game Design
Facilitators: Zach Lloyd and Anna Schlenz

Educational game design sits at the intersection of pedagogy, technology, and interactive storytelling. As gaming becomes increasingly ingrained in our cultural and educational spaces, educators are faced with a variety of important questions:  Can we create games that are both engaging and pedagogically effective? What role should interactivity, narrative, and game mechanics play in fostering meaningful learning experiences? And how can we assess learning outcomes without disrupting the flow of play? This roundtable invites participants from diverse disciplines to discuss the principles of effective educational game design, share experiences with game-based learning, and explore challenges such as accessibility, assessment, and balancing fun with instructional goals. We will explore such topics as:

• The role of narrative and immersion in knowledge retention
• Designing for different disciplines and learning goals
• The tension between gamification and intrinsic motivation
• Challenges in evaluating learning outcomes in games

Participants are encouraged to bring examples from their own work or experiences, whether they are designing games, using them in teaching, or researching their impact. This roundtable will serve as a space to exchange ideas, troubleshoot design challenges, and consider future collaborations in educational game development.

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Open Pedagogy on Manifold
Facilitators: Cen Liu and Maura McCreight

Open Pedagogy represents a transformative approach to teaching and learning that deeply resonates with CUNY’s commitment to social justice, accessibility, and inclusivity in education. As defined by scholars DeRosa and Jhangiani, it “makes learning processes visible and shared, inviting peer and public critique and collaboration, and allowing students to contribute to public knowledge.” CUNY instructors across disciplines are already engaging with these principles through practices that question traditional power structures, center student agency, and shift from content consumption to collaborative knowledge creation. In this session, we invite participants to discuss how these pedagogical philosophies can be utilized on CUNY’s instance of Manifold, including the freedom to experiment with digital platforms, the development of interdisciplinary models and relationships, and structural critiques of systems that fail students and educators.

Join us for a discussion of the ways you are putting Open Pedagogy into practice in the classroom with the support of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Zero-Cost Textbooks (ZCT) like Manifold. Share your student-centered assignments, and hear how others are including students in the publication process.  This session will examine how these approaches enhance learning and intersect to create a more dynamic and inclusive classroom environment. Finally, we welcome contributions that suggest ways to translate your teaching practices into scholarship.

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Working with Open Government Data
Facilitators: Peyton Cordero and Ian Williams 

Open government data, once hailed as the future of government, is now a regular institutional practice – right alongside archives. Researchers across disciplines (including social sciences, humanities, and STEM) rely on openly accessible data to identify social issues, form and answer research questions, test hypotheses, and observe changes in public administration over time. Whether this be housing, economic, education, environmental, or health data, utilizing these materials come with a variety of inferential and ethical concerns. Additionally, the platforms and interfaces used to access these data sets also vary in quality and design, and can take some time to find what you’re looking for.

This session is designed to provide opportunities for participants to talk through some of these issues in relation to your own projects, no matter what stage you are in the research process. This includes research questions, data sources, research plans, digital tools and analytic techniques, and more. Together we’ll brainstorm strategies for making the data work for you, address potential biases or shortcomings with your data, and discuss how recent changes in our government might require us to approach these data from different, new, critical perspectives.