Digital Research Storytelling Workshop
Join Our Next Workshop!
Applications are now open for our Fall 2024 Digital Research Storytelling Workshop. Designed for U of T researchers, this 6-week, in-person workshop runs from November 1 to December 6, 2024, featuring one 3-hour session each week.
Spaces are limited—apply by October 4, 2024 to reserve your spot!
What is Digital Storytelling?
Traditionally, digital stories are 2-to-5-minute creative micro documentaries highlighting how inequities and resistances are embedded in people’s lives. The affective dimension of digital stories lends to their impactful use as knowledge translation tools across disciplines and sectors.
Our Approach: Digital Research Storytelling
CDHI is building on the narrative, technical, creative and political tools of traditional digital storytelling methods to offer workshops tailored to researchers interested in sharing their research in an engaging and creative short video form. Digital Research Stories can be made at any stage of their research project — the project does not have to be done to be ready for story-making. The Digital Research Storytelling Workshop is a collaboration between the CDHI and Office of the Vice Principal Research and Innovation at UTSC.
No experience is necessary or needed to participate in our workshop. We provide all the tools and hands-on support needed.
Our Goal
Our goal with our Digital Research Storytelling Workshop Program is to increase the impact and relevance of researchers’ critical scholarship beyond scholarly domains and to move the needle on social justice issues. Digital Research Stories have the power to challenge epistemic ignorance and compel new understanding of power and in/equity on an affective level that sticks. Ideally, digital research stories move viewers to action. By connecting storytelling with social change in a collaborative research creation environment, digital research storytelling is an important practice of publicly engaged scholarship and a powerful method of creative knowledge mobilization.
What to Expect
In every workshop, you’ll benefit from:
- Hands-on Learning: Develop your narrative, scriptwriting, and technical skills in a supportive, open studio environment.
- Expert Guidance: Trained facilitators guide you through the entire digital research storytelling process, from conception to completion.
- Collaborative Environment: Engage in peer-to-peer learning with a select group of tri-campus U of T participants.
- Final Product: By the end of the workshop, you’ll have a completed digital story about your research.
Join Our Next Workshop!
Applications are now open for our Fall 2024 Digital Research Storytelling Workshop. Designed for U of T researchers, this 6-week, in-person workshop runs from November 1 to December 6, 2024, featuring one 3-hour session each week.
Spaces are limited—apply by October 4, 2024 to reserve your spot!
Additional Program Models
Beyond our core Digital Research Storytelling Workshops, we also offer customized workshop models to fit various needs. Explore the options below and reach out to us to discuss how we can work together.
For Research Participants & Community Partners
We design tailored workshops in collaboration with research leads to meet the specific needs of your study and participants.
For Classroom Integration
We collaborate with professors to adapt our digital research storytelling methods for classroom settings, ensuring alignment with course objectives.
For Consultation Services
Whether you’re planning to run your own workshop or seek support for a research project, we offer consultations to help you achieve your goals.
Book a Consultation Meeting
To explore any of these options, we offer a 20-minute consultation meeting to discuss your needs. After this conversation, we will provide a detailed quote for our services.
What Participants Say
Meet the Facilitators
Julia Gruson-Wood
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Julia Gruson-Wood is a Research Associate here at CDHI as well as the VP Office of Research & Innovation (UTSC) with a particular interest in research creation, publicly engaged scholarship, & knowledge mobilization. She is also an Adjunct Faculty Member with 2 programs at the University of Guelph:
- A community & arts-engaged PhD Program called Social Practice & Transformational Change;
- A multimedia storytelling hub called Re·Vision: The Centre for Art & Social Justice.
Julia received her digital storytelling training from Re·Vision in 2016 & is a longtime Re·Vision-affiliated researcher, methodologist, facilitator, & participant. She has led & collaborated on multiple grant-funded digital storytelling projects with 2SLGBTQI+ parents, Autistic & neurodiversity self-advocates & with Indigenous communities across Turtle Island & Aotearoa. She has published several articles on critical digital storytelling in The Journal of Homosexuality, Sage Research Methods, International Studies of Inclusive Education, & International Journal of Inclusive Qualitative methods.
Alisha Stranges
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Alisha Stranges is a queer, community-based, public humanities scholar and multi-modal artist. Currently, she serves as a Digital Research Creation Specialist here at CDHI and as the Research Manager and Project Oral Historian for the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory (PI, Elspeth Brown).
Alisha holds an M.A. in Women & Gender Studies from the University of Toronto, with a collaborative specialization in Sexual Diversity Studies (2020). Before entering the academy, she received a Diploma in Theatre Performance from Humber College (2006) and spent a decade devising original plays within Toronto’s queer, independent theatre community. From 2010 to 2015, she returned annually to Buddies in Bad Times Theatre as a teaching-artist and co-facilitator for PrideCab, an intensive training program in collective creation and performance for queer, trans, and gender variant youth. In 2019, she launched the Qu(e)erying Religion anti-Archive Project, which blends elements of oral history with the art of whiteboard animation to document 10+ years of supportive programming for life-giving, queer spirituality at the University of Toronto.
Elspeth H. Brown
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Elspeth H. Brown is Professor of History, University of Toronto, where her research concerns modern queer and trans history; oral history; queer archives; public history; the history and theory of photography; and the history of US capitalism. She is also currently the Associate VP Research, University of Toronto Mississauga, and the Director for the University of Toronto’s Critical Digital Humanities Initiative. Since 2014 she has been Director of the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory, a multi-year digital history and oral history public, digital humanities collaboration.
She is the author of numerous books, articles, and public humanities projects, including “Trans Oral History as Trans Care” (with Myrl Beam, Oral History Review 2022) and “Archival Activism, Symbolic Annihilation, and the LGBTQ+ Community Archive” (Archivaria 2020). Book-length studies include Work! A Queer History of Modeling (Duke University Press, 2019); Feeling Photography (Duke, 2014, co-editor with Thy Phu); The Corporate Eye: Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture, 1884-1929 (Johns Hopkins, 2005). From 2014-2021, she served on the Board of The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBQT2+ Archive, most recently as Co-President.