*Please note: I am not currently accepting graduate students. The U of S does not offer graduate degrees in Art History or Design.*

My field of specialization is the intersection between digital humanities, graphic design, the visual arts, and the creation and use of textual objects. Although all of my degrees are in English Literature studies, I focus very little on literature per se, and instead study the visual appearance of books, and other textual forms including video games and mobile applications, and how their forms influence the way these “texts” are received and used by various communities. I am also deeply invested in ensuring that research outputs created by artists and scholars are available and beneficial to the publics we serve, and to breaking down the divide between academia and broader publics through research creation and knowledge co-creation methodologies.

Current Projects

Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE; http://inke.ca)

I am the co-lead of the Community Cluster. Funded by a SSHRC Partnership grant, INKE is a North American-based research network with the goal of fostering open social scholarship: academic practice that enables the creation, dissemination, and engagement of open research by specialists and non-specialists in accessible and significant ways. My current projects with INKE include working with Jacob Semko and Jenny Li of YXE Backyard Studios (https://www.yxebackyardstudios.ca/) to create an open-access textbook preserving the waterless lithography printing techniques pioneered by Nik Semenoff. I am also working with Amigo’s Cantina (https://www.amigoscantina.com/) to create an open community archive of their nearly 40-year history as one of Canada’s top venues for independent music.

Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS; http://lincsproject.ca)

I am the Building Knowledge Research Theme lead. Funded by a CFI Cyberinfrastructure grant, LINCS is building the infrastructure to convert and interlink Canadian research datasets on cultural identities and cultural heritage, making them accessible as Linked Open Data for the benefit of scholars and the public. My work with LINCS is currently focused on developing pathways to import data from material held in CollectiveAccess (https://www.collectiveaccess.org/) collections into the LINCS infrastructure. As part of this process we have imported the University of Saskatchewan Art Collection into the LINCS instantiation of Research Space: https://rs.lincsproject.ca/resource/search:usask-art 

A History of Boring Typography: Book Design from the Renaissance to the Kindle

This in-progress monograph examines the continued influence of book design principles dating back to before the printing press on the design of contemporary reading interfaces, including e-readers, websites, and mobile operating systems. The first half of the book is based on my PhD dissertation, Blowing the Crystal Goblet: Transparent Book Design 1450-1950 (dissertation available here).

Recently Completed Projects

shARed spaces (http://sharedspaces.usask.ca)

I was a member of the Digital Design Team. Funded by the Canada Council Digital Strategy fund, shARed spaces was a research project of the University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries & Collection looking at how art and digital tools can bring people and experiences together. Employing user-centred and service design methodologies, we learned from partner communities across Saskatchewan who would like to share their stories and their artwork directly from where they are rather than having to travel to urban centres to view and display creative outputs. In response we designed a new digital service using augmented reality that foregrounded Indigenous voices and created space for voices that are often excluded.

Post-Digital Book Arts (PDBA; http://drc.pdba.usask.ca)

I was the PI for this SSHRC Insight Development Grant funded project that examined both the book arts as they have been impacted by the digital revolution, and the incorporation of digital technologies into the book arts in order to make digital artists’ books.

Feminist War Games?: Mechanisms of War, Feminist Values, and Interventional Games

I was one of the co-editors and contributed a chapter to this collection of essays published by Routledge in 2020. Focusing on the ways that games, both digital and table-top, can function as narratives, arguments, methods, and instruments of research, the volume demonstrates the impact of computing technologies on our perceptions, ideologies, and actions. Positing that feminist values can be asserted as a critical method of design, as an ideological design influence, and as a lens that determines how designers and players interact with and within arenas of war, the book addresses the persistence and brutality of war and issues surrounding violence in games, whilst also considering the place and purpose of video games in our cultural moment.

The Humanities and Fine Arts Digital Research Centre (DRC; https://library.usask.ca/drc/)

I oversaw the DRC from its creation in 2007 until it moved to the U of S Library in 2019, including serving as Director from 2011 to 2019, and Co-Director from 2019 to 2021 during its transition to the U of S Library. For a list of DRC projects, the majority of which I consulted on and/or contribute to, see https://library.usask.ca/drc/projects.php#Projectslist 

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book design community engagement digital humanities interface design media history research creation typography