Critical Digital Humanities Initiative
The Critical Digital Humanities Initiative (CDHI) enables trans-disciplinary collaborations that emphasize questions of power, social justice, and critical theory in digital humanities research. Its vision is to harness the very tools of the digital revolution to forge a new paradigm of critical humanities scholarship, one that bridges the humanities’ emphasis on power and culture in historical perspective with the tools and analysis of digital technology. The CDHI is new mix of research workshop and design atelier, equipping humanities researchers with the technical and design expertise to use digital tools to ask new questions, share new knowledge, and analyze power and inequality in historical perspective.
We provide consultation for faculty and graduate students; offer fellowships to graduate and undergraduate students; host postdoctoral fellows; organize critical digital humanities learning communities on specific topics/approaches; offer seed funding for emerging faculty research; provide bursaries for training in critical DH methods; support emerging curricula on all three campuses; program workshops, talks, events and conferences to support critical digital humanities research; host public events through our Lightning Lunch series and our annual speaker series; host an annual conference; foster a community of practice for critical DH researchers create; support research communication to broader publics; steward a bi-weekly newsletter and list-serv; and advocate for DH lab space.
The CDHI builds on the foundation of the Digital Humanities Network (DHN), which has supported research in the digital humanities at the University of Toronto since 2016. We define the digital humanities broadly, to include all the communities and methods, tools, and platform-based approaches often associated with the digital humanities, such as archiving, digitizing, curation, analysis, coding, editing, visualization, mapping, modelling, versioning, and prototyping. We have an inclusive agenda that encompasses interpretive or theoretical work on digitality. We bring together over 80 faculty members, 11 digital scholarship librarians, 10 research staff, and scores of graduate students, undergraduate researchers, and postdoctoral fellows working on over 40 DH research projects and teams.
CDHI Blog
Are you interested in learning more about our research and activities? Then you’ve found the place! Check out the CDHI Blog to learn more.
CONNECT WITH US
Featured Research Projects
Upcoming Virtual Events
From PhD to Pivot: 4 Steps to Launching Your Non-Academic Career
From PhD to Pivot is a workshop designed by Dr. Jen Polk for current graduate students and postdoctoral fellows affiliated with the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative (CDHI) at the University of Toronto.
Critical DH on Social (Day of DH)
Over the course of Day of DH, the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative (CDHI) at University of Toronto will be posting social media and blog content to showcase a range of research in the area of critical DH--digital humanities bringing together the humanities'...
CDHI Praxis Workshop: Instascholar: Social Media Strategies for Academics on Instagram
Can you start building an effective, growing social media presence that could eventually reach millions? Scholars can and should play an active role in combatting bias and disinformation campaigns in social media. Yet, we often shy from using Instagram, one of the...
Recent News
CDHI Associate Director wins $449,922 to build counter-archive of diverse refugee experiences
Professor Thy Phu (Arts, Culture, and Media, UTSC and Associate Director, CDHI) has been awarded $449,922 through the SSHRC Race, Gender, and Diversity Initiative Grant competition. The Refugee States partnership will build the capacity of non-profit organizations and peer researchers to create and preserve knowledge that they want and need through the development of workshops on visual and digital storytelling.
Welcome to our Postdoctoral Fellows in Community Data (2022-24)
The Critical Digital Humanities Initiative (CDHI), a strategic initiative of the University of Toronto, is thrilled to announce our CDHI Postdoctoral Fellows in Community Data (2022-24): Dr. Rachel Corbman and Katie Mackinnon. The CDHI Postdoctoral Fellows in...
CDHI Digital Humanities Developer
The CDHI invites applications for a Digital Humanities (DH) Developer to work collaboratively with faculty researchers on the complete lifecycle of digital scholarship projects. We are looking for someone with strong front-end development skills who is a collaborative, creative, and strategic thinker able to work closely with faculty to define research project goals and attainable deliverables within grant and research timelines and schedules. This is a term appointment until April 2024 with the possibility of renewal/extension. Applications are due May 26, 2022.