The Graduate Center Digital Initiatives (GCDI) and GC Digital Fellows are excited to welcome you all back to a new semester! Below you will find resources, workshops, and opportunities we have been developing to help you continue to learn and advance your digital scholarly projects. 

Where to find us 

This semester, consider joining us at one of our virtual workshops, requesting a one-on-one consultation with a GC Digital Fellow, subscribing to our calendar for our weekly virtual digital scholarship drop-in hours, or attending one of our events! 

Are you interested in finding communities of scholars working on a specific platform or digital scholarship methodology? Check out our GC Digital Fellow-supported  working groups on the CUNY Academic Commons. 

Want to keep up to date on all the GCDI happenings? Be sure to join our GCDI Group on the Commons, subscribe to our calendar, follow us on LinkedIn,BlueSky, and check out our Linktr.ee. Please be on the lookout for regular updates about our programs shared through your program’s listserv. It’s always good to know what’s going on with the GCDI, because you, yes you, are the #digitalGC.

Fall 2025 Opportunities

Workshops

This semester, GCDI will offer virtual workshops on digital research tools for people of all skill levels. Workshops are free and open to any member of the Graduate Center community. (Learn how to get the most out of our workshops.) Registration is required, you can select the workshop on the calendar and complete the workshop RSVP.

We will begin the fall semester with the following workshops:

Tools of DH

Thurs. Sept. 18 | Online | 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm.

Introduction to Python

Wed. Sept. 24 | Online |  1:00 pm – 3:00 pm.

Digital Methods in Languages Other Than English (LOTE)

Thurs. Sept. 25 | Online| 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

Introduction to QCIS 

Mon. Oct. 6 | Online | 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm 

In order to be as responsive as possible (workshop space is limited), please:

1) Be sure to RSVP to the workshops.

2) If you realize you can’t make it, please RSVP again with the “Can’t go” option.

Digital Scholarship Drop-in Hour

Are you working on learning a digital skill? Having trouble with some code? Do you have questions regarding a digital project, or are you seeking reviews about using a digital tool? This semester we will hold virtual drop-in hours on Thursday from 4pm to 5pm to engage your curiosity, troubleshoot challenges, and grow our community. Register here to visit us! 

One-on-one Consultations

Have a question about your digital project? Thinking of including digital tools in your scholarship or teaching? GCDI staff are available to meet in-person at the GC and/or remotely with GC students, faculty, and staff to talk through technical challenges, digital skills, or simply brainstorm. Sign up for a 30-minute consultation through this form.

CUNY and GC Resources

Manifold Digital Publishing Platform 

As CUNY students, you have free access to Manifold, an open source, digital publishing platform. Manifold is an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funded collaboration between the GC, University of Minnesota Press, and Cast Iron Coding. Manifold projects are multimedia friendly and texts created in Manifold may be annotated using Manifold’s built-in social annotation tool.

On CUNY’s instance of Manifold you can publish:

• Your own scholarship – searching for mami & abuelita (dissertation), Queer and Trans Prison Voices (capstone)
• Journals – Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy – JITP
• Open Educational Resources (OER) such as:
  • Archival projects – Let My People Know, Adrienne Rich:Teaching at CUNY
  • Class projects & course sites – Black Diasporic Visions: (De) Constructing Modes of Power, Modern Art and OER Writing Seminar, Theatre History II
  • Teaching editions of public domain texts – The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
  • Teaching and pedagogy resources – Teach@CUNY Handbook
• Creative work such as poetry or personal essays When We Had Cancer, Happy Nostalgia 

To learn more about using Manifold, check out our Getting Started with Manifold Quick Guides! Join the Manifold Users group on the CUNY Academic Commons to be notified about Manifold workshops and updates. 

If you have questions about using Manifold please contact Robin Miller or Manifold Graduate Fellows Cortnie Belser, Herline Honorat, Cen Liu, and August Smith.

CUNY Academic Commons

As a CUNY student, you are eligible to register for an account on the CUNY Academic Commons. The Commons is a CUNY-created and run platform for building websites, collaborating with groups, and connecting with peers across the university. Faculty, staff, and students at CUNY use the Commons to teach and take courses,  create academic portfolios, host websites for their research projects or academic departments, and more!  To learn more, check out the Commons’ About page, read the latest Commons News releases, browse featured groups and sites, and visit the Commons’ HELP pages for support with getting started.

GCDI Online Resources

If you find yourself unable to attend a particular workshop, there are a number of asynchronous GCDI resources you can use! Our resources include tutorials, handouts, and reflections that cover topics such as tools, methods as data and databases, research design, mapping, programming (including python and R), project management, sound recording, sharing, and analysis, text analysis, and web development.

• Please visit the Digital Resource Guide for materials by current and former Digital Fellows.
• Check out the Digital Fellows’ Tagging the Tower blog for posts like:
  • Racialized Aspects of Data Collection & Data Use by Peyton Cordero
  • What is metadata, and why does it matter? by Maggie Schreiner 
  • Tidying Data Using tidyverse in R by Chen Zhou
  • AI is everywhere; is it in qualitative research, too? Potentials, Pitfalls, and Open-Source Solutions (Part 1) by Parisa Setayesh
  • 6 Tools for Digital Safety in the Age of Surveillance by Anna Corbett
  • 10 Useful Extensions for VSCode by Zachary Lloyd 
  • WordPress: How to create content by Silvia Rivera Alfaro 
  • A Conceptual Guide to Digital Academic Identity by Stefano Morello 
• Additional resources include the Digital Archive Research Collective, the Digital Dissertations Resource Guide, the entire curriculum of the GC Digital Research Institute AND the Digital Humanities Research Institute.

Stay in touch!

The best way to stay connected is to check the GCDI website regularly. There, you will find all of our workshops, events, and grant opportunities on our calendar, as well as a slew of online resources to support your work this semester.

Please don’t hesitate to contact the Digital Fellows [email protected] with questions!

With best wishes for a productive and smooth semester,

your Digital Fellows,

Anna, Chinmay, Chris, Eunah, Maggie, Meha, Parisa, and Tuka

Note: This post by GC Digital Fellow Tuka Al-Sahlani is revised and updated from the post by GC Digital Fellows Rebecca Krisel in 2023, Zachary Lloyd in 2022, Param Ajmera in 2021 and Stefano Morello and Olivia Ildefonso for fall 2020. Previous versions were written or updated by Jojo Karlin for spring 2018, Kelsey Chatlosh in fall 2018, Javier Otero Peña in the spring of 2019, and Kristen Hackett in fall of 2019.