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Our Mission and History

Mission

The Center of Digital Humanities Research (CoDHR) seeds, incubates, and facilitates research in the digital humanities, broadly defined.  As such, CoDHR engages with faculty and students in an array of disciplines, primarily in the College of Arts & Sciences but also in a number of other colleges and schools across Texas A&M University. CoDHR also seeks to be a space for innovative digital humanities research by bringing together faculty and students at Texas A&M as well as the wider international community of digital humanists.

In pursuit of its mission, CoDHR supports a wide variety of projects, including graduate students’ theses, faculty research and public outreach, and highly-visible, international collaborations. We provide this support through such activities as trainings, colloquia, workshops, and guest speakers along with technical consultations, software development sprints, and limited hosting capabilities.

History

Texas A&M’s Digital Humanities Initiative was established by Maura Ives, Amy Earhart, Patrick Burkart, et. al., via a whitepaper entitled “The Center for Digital Humanities, Media and Culture (CDHMC)”, available here. The whitepaper was accepted, and the Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture (IDHMC) was established as one of eight IUMRIs or Landmark Research Areas to receive major university funding as part of its Academic Master Plan.

In 2018, the Initiative was approved to become the Center of Digital Humanities Research (CoDHR) by the Texas A&M Board of Regents. Dr. Laura Mandell (ENGL) was the first Director of CoDHR, appointed in 2018, with Dr. Daniel L. Schwartz (HIST) as Associate Director. As Director, Dr. Mandell spearheaded projects such as The Early Modern OCR Project (eMOP), The Advanced Research Consortium (ARC), BigDIVA, and The New Variorum Shakespeare (NVS).