The Advancing Digital Health Humanities Institute (ADHHI) hosted two intensive virtual sessions in September. These workshops and lectures were the first events held by the Institute since its funding was reinstated by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in July. The program’s twelve awardees convened to learn about new and emerging digital methods, the ethics of collecting and presenting oral histories, and the process of producing arts-driven digital health scholarship.
Technical exploration
Caterina Agostini, PhD, and postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine at Indiana University, taught a session on the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF). She explained how digital medievalists developed the framework to more easily share rare books and manuscripts published before the invention of the printing press. The program also brought in UC Berkeley’s Geographic Information System (GIS) and Map Librarian, Susan Powell, MLIS, to run an introduction session to GIS and the ArcGIS Storymaps platform.
Oral histories and arts approaches
In addition to the technical lessons, the ADHHI hosted lectures by prominent digital health humanists. Jennifer Brier, PhD, professor of history at the University of Illinois Chicago, shared her work developing oral histories from women living with HIV/AIDS and from people living with long COVID. Brier’s talk focused on the care and attention required to do ethical research in the history of medicine. She described the process of re-consenting research participants for their inclusion in the JSTOR archival database developed from the I’m Still Surviving oral history project.
Lan A. Li, PhD, and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, led the awardees through their arts-based approach to research. Trained as a filmmaker first, Li showed how aesthetic interests helped them understand and investigate concepts central to acupuncture and other East Asian traditional and integrative medical techniques. When talking about their new book, Body Maps and their various filmic projects, Li presented a digital methodology that centers on artistic thinking.
The ADDHI will conclude in summer 2026 with a symposium showcasing the awarded projects scheduled for February 2026.