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About

CDH Mission Statement

Toronto Metropolitan University's Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH) engages in collaborative transdisciplinary scholarship, research, and creativity (SRC) at the critical intersection of the material and the digital, contributing to scholarly and societal knowledge about cultural objects, makers, and communities. CDH projects and activities investigate the ways in which digital mediation fosters new ways of critical thinking through making. Our applied, experimental research and critical creativity focus on the following key areas-

  1. Digital Editing and the Design of Enhanced Online Editions.
  2. Digital Preservation and Critical Curation of Media and Artifacts.
  3. Deploying Digital Technologies for Community-Inclusive Knowledge Production.
  4. Intersectional Approaches to Digital Life Writing, Histories, and Stories.
  5. Digital Humanities Pedagogy.
  6. Experimenting with Digital Technologies for Creative Praxis.

Committed to diversity and inclusion, the CDH sustains a dynamic synergy between research and teaching by involving students in digital projects in the classroom and by training future researchers in digital humanities theory and practice. We are committed to social engagement through open public scholarship rooted in innovative knowledge mobilization in a global community.

The CDH welcomes new members and provides training, mentorship, and resources for faculty and student projects and grant applications.

Annual Reports

The Executive Summary of the 2023-2024 Annual Report can be read here (external link) .

History

The Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH) developed from the interest of a pair of Department of English faculty members in collaboratively exploring how Digital Humanities (DH) could enhance and extend their research. In July 2005, when Lorraine Janzen Kooistra joined what was at the time Ryerson University, she and her colleague Dennis Denisoff began collaborating on the Yellow Nineties Online project, with international support from the pioneering Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship (NINES), and strong local support from the Faculty of Arts, the Ryerson Library, and the Digital Media Projects office. By 2010, interest in DH at Ryerson had expanded beyond the Yellow Nineties Online, and founding Co-Directors Janzen Kooistra and Denisoff decided to form the Centre for Digital Humanities, announcing its inauguration at the Visualizing the Archive symposium. 

In 2011, the Department of English hired a scholar specializing in DH, Jason Boyd, and with his leadership, the CDH co-hosted THATCamp (external link)  GTA (Greater Toronto Area). The CDH became an official Faculty of Arts Research Centre in July 2012. Two years later (April 2014), the CDH hosted its second symposium, Mediating Lives & Stories: Mining/Making/Meaning. With Denisoff’s departure from Ryerson in 2016, Boyd, who had been Associate Director of the CDH since coming to Ryerson, became Co-Director with Janzen Kooistra.

As the CDH expanded in size and reputation, it outgrew the workspace that the Faculty of Arts had provided at 111 Gerrard Street since 2005. In January 2017, the CDH relocated to the 4th floor of the University Library, as part of the redesigned space around Special Collections and Archives. The new location, envisioned and realized by Chief Librarian Madeleine LeFebvre, arose out of years of productive collaborations and shared expertise between librarians and CDH faculty. The CDH officially launched its “re-boot” at Congress 2017 with a joint plenary address by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra to DHSI@Congress (Digital Humanities Summer Institute at Congress) and the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities/Société canadienne des humanités numériques. 

In April 2019 the CDH hosted its third symposium, Digital Diversity@Ryerson, an event inspired by the publication of Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities (U Minnesota Press, 2018), a ground-breaking collection of essays by international scholars in the field. The symposium celebrated the CDH’s growing reputation for intersectional digital humanities research, noting that of the Canadian contributors, fully half are associated with Ryerson’s CDH. The symposium also launched Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada (LGLC, PIs Constance Crompton and Michelle Schwartz), an interactive digital resource for the study of LGBTQ+ history in Canada hosted by Ryerson’s Library. The LGLC project was supported by the CDH from inception to launch and was the Centre’s first successful SSHRC Insight Grant project.

Over the course of 2019-2020, the CDH launched a successful lunchtime talk series, DH@Ryerson, showcasing DH research taking place at Ryerson and elsewhere. With the retirement of Janzen Kooistra, in 2020-2021 Boyd became the Director of the CDH, and Janzen Kooistra accepted the position of Director Emerita. With the closure of the University at the end of the 2019-2020 year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDH launched a series of monthly virtual programming (external link)  which continues to provide DH training and knowledge dissemination opportunities.

In April 2024, the CDH hosted its fourth symposium, Launching Yellow Nineties 2.0: A Symposium & Celebration, which marked the completion of the CDH’s founding and flagship DH project. Yellow Nineties 2.0, directed by Janzen Kooistra, was funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant, and trained numerous students over the years who went on to successful careers within and beyond academia.

Adapted from “Ryerson’s Centre for Digital Humanities: A Brief History,” from the CDH’s Five Year Review Self-Assessment Report (2021).