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StudioDH Term Update

What does the digital humanities look like when it escapes the university’s ivory tower? If you’re a senior living in Old Ottawa South, it might look a bit like this!

The 2025/26 MA cohort in the Specialization in Digital Humanities have been working this year with Senior Watch Old Ottawa South (SWOOS) and Dr. Amanda Montague, Postdoctoral Fellow in Community DH, to tackle a community-identified research project about social isolation and loneliness amongst seniors.

The relationship building for this project started last April, when SWOOS and Dr. Montague met regularly to discuss the aims of the project and scope the research ahead of the student cohort joining us. (Read more in the July OSCAR, p. 12).

The agreement was that students would facilitate some participatory data collection activities in community using creative arts-based methods like mapping, photography, network analysis, then analyze the data, and finally produce digital projects to share back what was learned with the community. These projects will be exhibited locally at the Old Ottawa South Community Centre this spring.

In September we welcomed our enthusiastic cohort of 10 graduate students (listed below):

The students and seniors had their initial meet-and-greet between SWOOS and the students in September. (Read more in the November OSCAR, p. 3) And then began the community engagement training through a partnership between StudioDH and the Ottawa-based non-profit organization, Synapcity. We developed a partnered learning opportunity where students would receive training on community engagement methods alongside members of the greater Ottawa community at Synapcity’s Civics Boot Camp. These learning opportunities with the community took place at Carleton’s Dominion Chalmers Centre.

In October, we took the opportunity to introduce the Old Ottawa South community to the project, and to the students, in a community information session at Southminster United Church. Then, in November we began a three-week period of data collection, where students each took a turn facilitating a participatory data collection activity. These activities were held in community at the Old Ottawa South Firehall. We pulled really impressive numbers for these activities, on average hosting about 20 seniors per session, with the final session capping at our largest number of participants: 26. You can see this in action on our website.

We wrapped up the term with students doing the preliminary data analysis of all the qualitative data that was collected. This term, we are exploring data analysis and digital project creation, with opportunities to receive input from the community partner throughout. 

 Benny Legault and Aidan Power, in an article for the OSCA Newsletter, wrote “We were thrilled by the turnout we saw at each of [the workshops]… Given the success of our project so far and with the support of the community behind us, we feel emboldened to continue our work over the winter…stay tuned!”

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