Who We Are
Our Mission
The Digital Humanities Laboratory (DHLab), a unit of Yale University Library, offers space, community, and resources for Yale scholars who pursue DH research questions in the arts, humanities, and humanistic social sciences. Located inside Sterling Memorial Library, the Franke Family Digital Humanities Laboratory is a hub for consultations, training, and opportunities that support Yale students, faculty, and cultural heritage professionals in their engagement with digital tools and techniques. As part of the Yale University Library, the DHLab participates in global conversations around the analysis and use of large-scale digitized cultural heritage collections.
We embrace a model of DH that is expressive and interpretive, experimental and collaborative, and above all: user-centered. As a result, we support DH undertakings of all shapes and sizes, including but not limited to: creating digital text editions, building virtual exhibitions, performing analysis of all kinds (text, network, spatial), data visualization, metadata transformation, creating StoryMaps for humanists, developing machine learning algorithms, and more.
Our Guiding Principles
- The DHLab is a shared resource designed for researchers asking humanistic questions at Yale that creates prototypes, proofs-of-concept, and sustainable DH products.
- The DHLab provides expertise in identifying and obtaining external support for DH projects, including advising on the application process and technical implementation details.
- The DHLab supports digital humanities skills acquisition for research through consultations, training, and guest lectures.
- The DHLab supports both initial digital humanities project ideation and innovative new directions for existing projects.
- The DHLab develops open-source software to facilitate user-centered approaches to humanistic research and collection-scale analysis.
Our Partners and Collaborators
The DHLab collaborates with other Yale units and departments, along with external organizations to fulfill our mission. These include:
- Other units within Yale University Library, including the StatLab, GIS services, and the Department of Area Studies and Humanities Research Support
- The Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning
- The Center for Collaborative Arts and Media
- Yale Center for Research Computing
- Yale Pathways to the Arts & Humanities, as well as Yale Pathways to the Sciences
- Yale Center for Engineering Innovation and Design
- The Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage
A Brief History
Yale's roots in digital humanities undertakings date back (at least) to Father Roberto Busa's visit to our campus in 1956 and the Computers for the Humanities conference that was sponsored by Yale on a grant from IBM in 1965.
The 2015 founding of the DHLab signifies Yale University's continued commitment to advancing research and teaching in the humanities. Generously funded by The Goizueta Foundation and by Barbara and Richard Franke '53, the DHLab supports Yale scholars in their pursuit of humanistic questions by way of user-centered digital expression and computational methods.
OUR CORE TEAM
Gavi Levy Haskell
Gavi Levy Haskell has worked on digital humanities projects in formal and informal capacities for about a decade, ranging from 3D modeling to curriculum development to mapping. They recently served as the Technology Fellow at the Harvard Art Museums, generating visualizations of the collection’s data and collaborating on digital projects with faculty, students, and staff for a gallery space in the museum. Gavi is also a Ph.D. candidate in Yale’s History of Art Department, where they are finishing their dissertation on visual narrative. Their B.A. is in art history and computer science from Smith College, in Northampton, MA, and they hold an M.A. in the history of art from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.
You can find Gavi’s office (SML 176F) in the DHLab, or email them at gavi.levyhaskell@yale.edu.
Kayla Shipp
With a background in English, computer science, and nonprofit development, Kayla earned an M.A. in Digital Humanities at King’s College London and a Ph.D. in English at Emory University. Before joining the Yale DHLab, she worked as a digital scholarship specialist at the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, where she partnered with museums, authors, and researchers to build interactive digital objects and publications.
Kayla’s research explores the poetics of code and virtual space, focusing on the intersection of material culture and technology. Her work has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry. You can find some of her recent projects and publications at kaylashipp.com.
Digital Humanities Consultants
Digital Humanities Consultants provide a variety of DH project support, and offer research guidance to Yale faculty, staff, and students during Office Hours.
Work With Us
Are you a Yale graduate student interested in humanistic questions and in building professional experience and expertise on digital humanities projects in a client-facing role? Starting in Fall 2023, the Yale DHLab welcomes applicants to our DH Consultant positions.
Student JobsOUR GENERALIST CONSULTANTS
Layna Chen
Layna Chen is a Masters of Environmental Design Student at the Yale School of Architecture. She holds a M.Sc. in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia and a B.Arch and B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design. She looks at how mapping, media technologies, and digital networks shape visibility, value, and citizenship within Indonesia’s peatlands. She has been involved in the creation of interactive digital archives and has experience in 3D modeling on a variety of platforms, Python programming, and data visualization (D3).
Estelle Guéville
Estelle Guéville is a PhD student in Medieval Studies at Yale. She previously worked for cultural institutions in France and the Gulf, including the Louvre Abu Dhabi, where she developed digital research and outreach. She participates in several DH projects and is the co-creator of the Paris Bible Project, a digital humanities initiative studying abbreviations and special letter forms as markers of scribal practices. In her dissertation, she aims to recover the history of medieval female scribes, using both traditional and digital methods of history and art history.
Kimberly Lifton
Kimberly Lifton is a PhD student in the Medieval Studies Program. She holds a BA from Hamilton College and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge. Her dissertation research considers how knowledge of changing geopolitics in the Islamic world during the fifteenth century reached England, Burgundy, and France. The dissertation project draws together political documents, art, and literature to expose the influence of knowledge collection on fictional representations of Muslims. In the digital humanities, Kimberly has worked on several projects involving handwritten text recognition and natural language processing.
Katy Wilson
Katy Wilson is a PhD student at the Yale School of the Environment. She holds a BA (Hons) in Geography from the University of Cambridge and a MA in Climate and Society from Columbia University’s Climate School, where she was a Fulbright Scholar. Katy’s research focuses on how companies can reshape their business models to transition toward a net-zero economy.
OUR SPECIALIST CONSULTANTS
Nicole Cosmé-Clifford
Nicole Cosmé-Clifford is a PhD candidate in the Music Department. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Stony Brook University and a Master of Arts in Music Theory from CUNY Queens College. Her research interests include AI explainability in music scholarship, AI’s relationship to contemporary music-makers and music economies, and vernacular music traditions in the United States.
Avital Romach
Avital Romach is a PhD student in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, specializing in cuneiform studies. She employs computational methodologies to study the ancient world and ancient languages in particular. She has experience with the Python programming language, optical character recognition (OCR) for ancient scripts, and text analysis methods.
Serena Strecker
Serena Strecker is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department, specializing in the history of religion, media, and communication in early modern Europe. Her dissertation examines collections of exempla, short stories meant to illustrate a moral or doctrinal message, to uncover the interconnections between Catholic and Lutheran discourse during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the digital humanities, Serena has worked on developing a set of best practices for applying handwritten text recognition (HTR) to early modern print and using network analysis to visualize the early modern media ecosystem.