News, notes, and tutorials from the lab.
Humanities Innovation Lab
Sep 1, 2026
The Humanities Innovation Lab welcomes Jocelyn McKnight as Executive Director and Tessa Bordalejo as Operations Director, continuing their work with HIL in new leadership roles and marking an exciting next chapter for the Lab.
Humanities Innovation Lab
Aug 17, 2026
Celebrating Josephine Konamah Tabiri’s successful MA defense and her research on linguistic landscapes, cultural identity, and immigrant-owned businesses in Lethbridge.
Humanities Innovation Lab
Aug 12, 2026
Celebrating Davide’s successful PhD defense of The Space of Love: Modelling Discourse in Later Middle English Literature, an interdisciplinary study bringing together medieval literature, discourse analysis, and computational methods.
Humanities Innovation Lab
Jul 17, 2026
In Episode 188 of Conversations with Dr. David Dobson, A K M Iftekhar Khalid discusses his research on how generative AI may be reshaping the way English is used around the world.
Humanities Innovation Lab
Jun 17, 2026
Dan O’Donnell has been awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for his project, “safespaces? Speaker-Centred Rights, Discursive Power, and the Changing Stakes in Debates about Academic Freedom.” The project examines…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Jun 15, 2026
We are proud to announce that Morgan has been accepted as a member of the Editorial Board for Press Start, a multidisciplinary, open-access game studies journal based at the University of Glasgow.
Humanities Innovation Lab
Jun 13, 2026
Three students from the lab pursued extra training this year by attending the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, hosted at the University of Montreal.
Humanities Innovation Lab
Jun 6, 2026
The Humanities Innovation Lab travelled to the University of Montreal to attend the annual Canadian Society for Digital Humanities Congress. Together, there were 5 presentations.
Humanities Innovation Lab
May 30, 2026
At the end of April, Jocelyn successfully defended her honours thesis, titled “The Expansion of War and Violence in Tok Pisin: A Cognitive and Corpus Study on Polysemy in Pait and Paitim.” She skillfully presented her…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Apr 17, 2026
Morgan has successfully defended her MA thesis, “The Labyrinth of Depression: Narrative Form and Recursive Structure from Medieval Dream Vision to Digital Narrative.” Her research focuses on representations of…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Mar 23, 2026
We are very pleased to announce that Shara Merril has won second place in the PhD category for her poster presentation at the Meetings of the Minds Conference. This is an exciting achievement. Her project stood out for…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Mar 23, 2026
We are pleased to celebrate Jocelyn McKnight’s success at the Meetings of the Minds conference, where she received awards in both the poster and oral presentation categories for undergraduate students. Jocelyn’s work is…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Mar 11, 2026
Humanities Innovation Lab
Feb 28, 2026
PhD candidate Davide Pafumi has been awarded a Manuscript Data as Collections Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Davide is the only fellow to receive this honour before completing his PhD, a recognition of…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Feb 18, 2026
Humanities Innovation Lab
Jan 19, 2026
Frank Onuh was among 20 scholars selected from hundreds of applicants worldwide to attend the 7th edition of the fully funded, seven-day International Winter School organized by the Arab Center for Research and Policy…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Oct 8, 2025
Augustine Farinola of the University of Alberta joins our next lab meeting with a talk titled Moral Chains and Animal Agents: A Database-Driven Study of Folktales. His research sits at the intersection of AI ethics, digital humanities, and visual epistemology…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Sep 4, 2025
We’re excited to share that our lab has grown again; this time with two new PhD students joining us from the Cultural, Social, and Political Thought program. Welcome Shara and Oluwaseun! Find out more about our new…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Jun 2, 2025
The lab recently journey to Toronto for the CSDH/SCHN 2025 Congress: Reframing Togetherness, held from May 30 to June 1 at George Brown College. We were proud to contribute five research papers covering a range of…
Humanities Innovation Lab
May 7, 2025
Davide has been awarded the Founders Grant of the International Courtly Literature Society (North American Branch) to support his participation in the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo! The grant…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Apr 28, 2025
Frank has passed his comps which means he's one step closer to becoming a doctor. We are so proud of the work you have done up to this point, and unsurprised you have done so well! Now, Frank is off to collect his data…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Apr 3, 2025
We’re excited to announce that Jocelyn McKnight has been awarded the Chinook Summer Research Award! This competitive award supports undergraduate students who have a research project over the summer. Jocelyn will…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Mar 27, 2025
We’re thrilled to share some exciting news—Frank’s latest abstract has been accepted for publication in the next edition of African Studies Review published by the Cambridge University Press! We can’t wait to see his…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Mar 26, 2025
Jocelyn McKnight, presents a poster at Lethbridge’s Meeting of the Minds Conference. Her project, titled “Cross-Language Transformations: The Journey of Loanwords Between French & English,” explores the phonetics and…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Mar 19, 2025
PhD candidate Davide Pafumi will travel internationally to Boston to present his research.His paper, “Translating Translation”: A Computational-Linguistic Analysis of Modern English Translations of the Beowulf…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Mar 17, 2025
Frank and Dan have been invited to lecture at the first Lagos Spring School in Digital Entrepreneurship and Digital Cultures (LSSDEDC-2025) to be held between March 17 and 22. Frank will be lecturing on March 20th at…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Mar 14, 2025
Khalid and Frank are both presenting at the 2025 Crossing Boundaries Graduate Symposium which focuses on graduate student research in the fine arts, humanities and social sciences at the University of Lethbridge. Khalid…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Mar 3, 2025
Our lab recently explored the Horizon of Khufu, a VR experience that transports users inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. This immersive journey allowed us to navigate the pyramid’s inner chambers and witness its original…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Mar 3, 2025
We are pleased to announce that Davide has been elected as a member of the Digital Medievalist's Postgraduate Committee. This committee was created to coordinate joint panels, produce podcasts, manage social media, and…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Feb 27, 2025
Morgan is presenting at the 2025 International Conference on Games and Narrative on March 6, from 15:30 to 16:30 EST. The conference is hybrid, and virtual attendance is available. Online registration can be completed…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Feb 25, 2025
We are pleased to announce that Nathan Woods is back as the postdoctoral research fellow of the Humanities Innovations Lab. Nathan was awarded the Digital Research Alliance-EDIA Champion fellowship and with this he will…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Feb 19, 2025
Episode 25 of the AI in Action Podcast, host Dr. Sidney Shapiro sits down with Frank Ọnụ, a doctoral researcher, instructor, and lab member, to discuss the critical intersections of AI, ethics, and social justice. Frank…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Feb 16, 2025
We are excited to announce that the lab has published a new article titled “Scarlet Cloak and the Forest Adventure: A Preliminary Study of the Impact of AI on Commonly Used Writing Tools”.
Humanities Innovation Lab
Jan 9, 2025
Episode 19 of the AI in Action Podcast, host Dr. Sidney Shapiro sits down with Dr. Barbara Bordalejo, an Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Lethbridge and a leading voice in the application…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Nov 28, 2024
Passing your comps means you only have to complete your thesis before you can be called a doctor. We are immensely proud of the work you have done up to this point, and we will plan a celebration when you return from a…
frankonuh
Oct 1, 2024
The persistent categorization of African languages within Western linguistic frameworks is a troubling remnant of colonial thinking that continues to plague academic discourse. African scholars must unite and challenge…
davide.pafumi
Sep 24, 2024
One day, in my Professional Skills seminar, I had the pleasure to meet Dr. Jason Laurendeau, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts & Science at U of L, teaching Sociology. He came as a guest speaker and talked…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Sep 3, 2024
We are pleased to welcome Josephine Konamah Tabiri as our new master student and lab member. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. Her research focuses on…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Jul 30, 2024
DH 2024 is the annual conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations. The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media will host the event, online and in person, at Arlington, VA campus, in the…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Jul 7, 2024
Davide was awarded a stipend to take part at the Summer School "Computational Language Technologies for Medievalists" at the University of Graz, Austria and present a poster about his doctoral research. The Summer…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Jun 29, 2024
The bursary committee of the IMC at the institute for medieval studies of Leeds awarded Davide a bursary out of 430 deserving applicants from all over the world to share his research. He will present his paper titled…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Jun 1, 2024
The lab will attend the 2024 CSDH/SCHN congress hosted by Université de Montréal, 19-21 June. This year the lab will present four papers on AI detection tools, existence of data in traditional humanities, topic modeling…
davide.pafumi
May 22, 2024
Der Grundsatz, nach dem ich entscheide, ist: Die Schuld ist immer zweifellos. (Kafka, "In der Strafkolonie")
Humanities Innovation Lab
May 13, 2024
Dan, Barbara, Davide, and Morgan attended the 59th annual congress hosted by the medieval institute at the Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo from May 9th-11th. It is an annual gathering of thousands of scholars…
Barbara Bordalejo
May 6, 2024
Between the 22nd and the 25th of April, the Humanities Innovation Lab, sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, offered a Digital Humanities workshop for beginners. Although it was an enormous amount of work…
Humanities Innovation Lab
May 1, 2024
From April 22nd to 25th, students, researchers, and educators gathered for our free four-day workshop, Digital Humanities for Beginners. It was designed for those in the humanities and social sciences to provide an…
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Apr 15, 2024
Setting Up an ORCID Account: A Guide for Digital Humanities Students
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Apr 15, 2024
Creating a Zenodo Account: A Guide for Beginners
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Apr 15, 2024
Beginner's Guide to Setting Up a GitHub Account and Configuring Git Without Using the Terminal
Humanities Innovation Lab
Mar 17, 2024
Each year, one to three awards (up to $1,500 in total) are presented for the best abstract of a paper submitted to the annual conference. This year’s theme is "Interiority and the Outer World: The Middle Ages as Meeting…
morganpearce3
Jan 9, 2024
I was browsing through the blogs done by students in the Chaucer class, and was struck with inspiration when somebody mentioned that "this line-up of characters [the pilgrims] almost felt like an introduction to all of…
Barbara Bordalejo
Nov 28, 2023
Today, I misread a student blog in which there was a discussion of “reading softly” in reference to Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves. The student was writing about “threading softly” when analyzing indigenous literature…
frankonuh
Nov 1, 2023
On a sweltering afternoon in 2019, I tuned into international news channels via YouTube, only to find the world engulfed in chaos. Leading nations like China, the US, and the UK were epicenters of palpable dread. Their…
frankonuh
Oct 25, 2023
1. The Dawn of AI (1950s) 2. Rule-based Systems (1960s-1970s) 3. Neural Networks and Backpropagation (1980s) 4. Support Vector Machines & Decision Trees (1990s-2000s) 5. Deep Learning Renaissance (2010s) 6. NLP…
davide.pafumi
Oct 23, 2023
When I met Barbara in Venice for the first time, she told me about the "unessay" and the collection of papers on the topic that she is editing with Dan, I became increasingly curious to know more about this strange and…
khalid
Oct 18, 2023
In a graduate class, a teacher was saying that the person had to study more than 700 academic books before appearing for the comprehensive examination, and it was almost a book a day. That was a huge endeavor. We were…
Barbara Bordalejo
Oct 11, 2023
Each of my doctorates presents different computational approaches to the study of texts. Both were written between 1999 and 2003 and were heavily influenced by my collaborators, a group led by Christopher Howe, head of…
morganpearce3
Oct 2, 2023
As many members of the lab know, I am very interested in horror films and video-games. I do tend to play horror games more than watching horror movies these days, especially games from indie developers. I try to keep up…
davide.pafumi
Sep 18, 2023
While generative large language models are not inherently nefarious, it is essential to recognise that some of their consequences may disrupt the delicate equilibrium of our economic systems, thereby underscoring the…
Barbara Bordalejo
Aug 23, 2023
We are pleased to announce that Kirandeep rocked her defence today. Her work, Gurmukhi Punjabi as a Low-Resource Language through the Lens of the BLARK Model, was praised by the members of the committee. Kirandeep shows…
khalid
Aug 1, 2023
This piece of writing I could not resist, as it was hammering in my brain, though I should concentrate on computing technology, artificial intelligence, or English language studies, which are kinds of assignments I need…
khalid
Jul 30, 2023
When I described at a dining table Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a postcolonial tool, it seemed to the eyes of listeners, “Are you serious?” AI is vastly seen as an assistant to humans, and it will give us some…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Jul 16, 2023
Nathan, Dan, and Barbara presented their paper titled 'Data Problems in the Humanities, or "When everybody is special,no one is”?' at DH2023, sponsored by ADHO, in Graz Austria, from July 10-14th.
khalid
Jun 21, 2023
I am from the Department of English. I completed my MA in English in January 2023. I started the program in January 2021. I spent most of my time during the last two years (January 2021–January 2023) at the Humanities…
Humanities Innovation Lab
May 28, 2023
We are pleased to announce that the majority the lab members are presenting at the 2023 annual congress for the Canadian Society of Digital Humanities at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The conference will…
khalid
Apr 24, 2023
In Brandon, Manitoba, I was sitting on a couch of a commercial bank and waiting for my wife, who was talking to a teller. My wife went to the bank for documents. I was browsing the net on my cellphone and it might be…
frankonuh
Apr 17, 2023
This blog post summarizes my takeaway from one of my courses, Feminism, Gender and Sovereignty. Initially, I was unsure how feminist theory could relate to my research interests. However, as I began to engage with the…
khalid
Apr 8, 2023
After the second World War (1940s) to the present (2020s), this period is usually referred as the span of contemporary literature. The world experienced a huge devastation during the World War II and it impacted hugely…
davide.pafumi
Apr 3, 2023
As the field of Computer-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) within Digital Humanities is gaining momentum, there is a growing need for tools and methods that can help researchers explore complex sets of textual data. As…
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Apr 2, 2023
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Mar 27, 2023
Like almost everybody in the academic world, I suspect, I’ve been thinking a lot about Chat GPT.
khalid
Mar 26, 2023
I am writing to share my personal experience to tell my labmates, friends, supervisors about the power of writing words. I am humble guy. English is a foreign language in my country, Bangladesh. However, one wonderful…
frankonuh
Mar 20, 2023
I thought I should share a bit about this tool – Litmap – which I find very helpful, especially when searching for related literature/papers/publications in any discipline. I consider Litmap a great tool for academics…
khalid
Mar 19, 2023
My question is why the concept of Open Education Resources (OER) has been started. If I review the current OER benefits, I can enumerate few points. The first thing about OER appears that if the study materials, that…
Humanities Innovation Lab
Mar 15, 2023
Both got accepted into a very competitive program and won two of the nine available spots to attend the "Foundations & Applications of Humanities Analytics Workshop" at the Santa Fe Institute. The workshop will take…
frankonuh
Mar 13, 2023
It is not sickness that I am afraid of
davide.pafumi
Mar 13, 2023
I recently had the opportunity to catch up with my friend Julia, who introduced me to a captivating video game that she has been enjoying playing. This is Atomic Heart, an action role-playing video game developed and…
khalid
Mar 13, 2023
This thought appeared while I was trying to find the reasons for the rise of English in the Global South Countries. One main reason of the many is the social network that computer technology and internet started to make…
Barbara Bordalejo
Mar 7, 2023
This morning I was asked about the Canterbury Tales. The question was questionable (perhaps I will write about that some other time) because of its wording and range. For the purposes of this answer, I am going to…
frankonuh
Mar 7, 2023
Translation is a crucial aspect of global communication, as it enables information to be disseminated across linguistic and cultural boundaries. However, translations can also be used to perpetuate neocolonial power…
khalid
Mar 7, 2023
The availability and easy access to innovative technology such as computers, mobile phones, internet, computer games, cartoons, comics, movies, and open-source study materials like Open Educational Resources (OER) are…
Barbara Bordalejo
Mar 6, 2023
During my first year of university, the Venezuelan government proposed changing the high-school curriculum, including ditching the classics. The proposal was to stop teaching Homer, Virgil, and Greek theatre. At the…
frankonuh
Feb 28, 2023
Nigeria possesses a distinctive linguistic topography attributable to its over 500 indigenous languages. However, English is a widely spoken language in the country, due to its colonial history and the fact that it…
khalid
Feb 26, 2023
The terms are recent historical issues because of the advent and the availability of new internet technology and its intervention. Wayne Hodgins used the term for "learning objects" in 1994 for the first time. Hodgins…
frankonuh
Feb 22, 2023
The plight of girls in northern Nigeria is a recurring issue that continues to linger. The BringBackOurGirls campaign, which began in 2014, was a clarion call to the world about the desperate situation these girls face.
morganpearce3
Feb 14, 2023
I know it isn't the usual blog post, but I thought I would attempt to post some creative writing that I did a little while ago. I used to write a lot when I was younger, but lately any attempts at creative writing…
khalid
Feb 13, 2023
The 21st February is our pride and courage. The day, February 21, 1952 and the martyrs of the day in Bangladesh make us remember that we can stand to fight for a language and lay our life. February 21 is a symbolic day…
khalid
Feb 7, 2023
I raise a debatable topic. The relationship between Bangladesh people and English is deeper than usually measured in the scale of the number of speakers in the country. English dominates public, private, corporate and…
frankonuh
Feb 6, 2023
[](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/18210/production/109523889gettyimages-3318888.jpg)
Barbara Bordalejo
Feb 5, 2023
Thanks to the paleography class, I have been thinking a lot about handwriting.
davide.pafumi
Feb 4, 2023
This story comes also along with a very agitated week at the UoL in which we saw the strong contraposition between unreconcilable ideological positions and it is the result of a conversation in Spanish I was…
Barbara Bordalejo
Jan 23, 2023
Should everyone take ethics classes? The data course highlights the problem of the need for more training in various educational sectors, particularly mathematics and computer sciences. A cursory glance at a few pure…
frankonuh
Jan 23, 2023
Who decides what a word should mean? Who decides what is an appropriate or inappropriate meaning? How do we measure and compare knowledge and who decides what is superior or inferior? “Knowledge is not neutral; it is…
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Jan 23, 2023
What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered…
Barbara Bordalejo
Dec 22, 2022
The Humanities Innovation Lab welcomes its newest member, Frank Onuh, who will work on text analysis of political discourse and hate speech.
Barbara Bordalejo
Dec 22, 2022
We are proud to congratulate Khalid on the successful defence of his thesis, The History of English in Bangladesh. Khalid showed mastery of his subject as well as a solid sense of the field.
morganpearce3
Dec 12, 2022
Continuing my journey through the game Pentiment, I came across an especially resonant part of the game. In order to convey its full effectiveness, a bit of backstory is required.
morganpearce3
Nov 28, 2022
"Italian pentimento repentance, remorse (a1257), change of opinion (1630), correction (a1827)" (OED).
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Nov 21, 2022
It’s been interesting watching how the last few weeks have played out on Twitter. Like many people — especially academics and journalists — I’ve been engaged with the platform for quite a while.
Barbara Bordalejo
Nov 20, 2022
Last week, Dan posted a few notes on bookbinding in which he wondered about the swiftness of the 19-century binding in reference to the Coptic and Gothic ones we had learned in the previous days. After musing whether…
Barbara Bordalejo
Nov 8, 2022
Books at the Bodleian by Dollymoon (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dollymoon)
Barbara Bordalejo
Oct 24, 2022
Academia is a place where one thrives on external validation queues. It is rare, at least for me, to find sources of joy not related to publications, grants, or community roles signifying trust. This past week, however…
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Oct 24, 2022
At the Humanities Innovation Lab, we are encouraging students (and faculty) to blog each week about their work. That can be intimidating....
morganpearce3
Oct 19, 2022
The cover for the album Murder Ballads (https://genius.com/albums/Nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds/Murder-ballads)
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Oct 17, 2022
Barbara Bordalejo
Oct 11, 2022
Although I have been working with digital editions for a long time, this past week, I was faced with a completely divergent perspective for the first time in a very long time. As part of the Textual Communities…
Barbara Bordalejo
Oct 4, 2022
[](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HandsofAmity11.JPG)
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Sep 30, 2022
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Sep 7, 2022
The Humanities Innovation Lab is offering a series of workshops on technologies of use to humanities scholars and students.
Barbara Bordalejo
Sep 1, 2022
The Humanities Innovation Lab
Barbara Bordalejo
Sep 1, 2022
Are you interested in the Middle Ages? Are you curious about what manuscripts might say? Would you like to change the world of Chaucerian studies with your perspective? Do you have innovative ideas about medieval…
Barbara Bordalejo
Jan 24, 2022
Barbara Bordalejo, Ryan Cordell, and Daniel P. O’Donnell, Editors
Barbara Bordalejo
Jan 17, 2022
The Visionary Cross and the Humanities Innovation Lab at the University of Lethbridge seek curious and enthusiastic graduate students for funded research positions at the MA and Ph.D. levels.
Barbara Bordalejo
Jan 10, 2022
The Canterbury Tales Project is seeking curious and enthusiastic graduate students for funded research positions at the MA and Ph.D. levels. If you are interested in Chaucer, Middle English literature, manuscript…
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