{"id":1631,"date":"2010-06-24T11:20:37","date_gmt":"2010-06-24T15:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/?page_id=1631"},"modified":"2025-08-26T16:01:54","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T20:01:54","slug":"shawn-graham","status":"publish","type":"cu_people","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/people\/shawn-graham\/","title":{"rendered":"Shawn Graham"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Shawn Graham<\/b>\u00a0trained in Roman archaeology but has become over the years a digital archaeologist and digital humanist<\/a>. In 2016 he won a Provost’s Fellowship in Teaching Award and was designated a Carleton University Teaching Fellow. His most recent SSHRC Insight Grant project was called ‘The Bone Trade: Studying the Online Trade in Human Remains with Machine Learning and Neural Networks’, which culminated in a major study with his collaborator Damien Huffer, These Were People Once: The Online Trade in Human Remains and Why It Matters<\/i><\/a>. He was part of the multi-institution SSHRC Partnership Grant funded project, ‘CRANE: Computational Research in the Ancient Near East’ led by Tim Harrison of the University of Toronto. Graham’s sub-project involved using neural networks to complete archival photographs for photogrammetric reconstructions. Most recently, he and his collaborator at the University of Maastricht, Dr. Donna Yates, won a SSHRC Insight Development Grant to explore knowledge graphs and the antiquities trade (which have enabled them to spot hitherto unknown episodes in the trade). Graham also recently launched the XLab: Cultural Heritage Informatics Collaboratory.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He keeps an open lab notebook of his research and experiments in digital history and archaeology at his research blog, www.electricarchaeology.ca.<\/span><\/a> He was on sabbatical 2023-24, and used some of that time to contribute to the International Space Station Archaeological Project (ISSAP) .<\/a> His MA Student Chantal Brousseau contributed to that project by overhauling an open source image annotation platform to serve as a collaborative archaeology recording system. ISSAP won the New Directions Award from the AAA and the Award for Outstanding Work in Digital Archaeology from the AIA. Graham was second author on the ISSAP project’s report on the first archaeological field work ever done in space<\/a>, and devised many of the analytical methods used in that landmark study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is founder and editor of the open access journal, Epoiesen: A Journal for Creative Engagement in History and Archaeology.<\/strong><\/a> He abandoned Twitter for Mastodon-powered Scholar Social; follow his feed here<\/a>. He awaits the inevitable enshittification<\/a> of BlueSky. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Books<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\n An Enchantment of Digital Archaeology \n <\/h2>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n \n\n

An Enchantment of Digital Archaeology: Raising the Dead with Agent-Based Models, Archaeogaming, and Artificial Intelligence<\/a> <\/em>is an exploration of the use of computation in archaeology as a kind of magic, a way of heightening the archaeological imagination. Agent-based modelling allows archaeologists to test the \u2018just-so\u2019 stories they tell about the past. It requires a formalization of the story so that it can be represented as a simulation; researchers are then able to explore the unintended consequences or emergent outcomes of stories about the past. Agent-based models are one end of a spectrum that, at the opposite side, ends with video games. This volume explores this spectrum in the context of Roman archaeology, addressing the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of a formalized approach to computation and archaeogaming.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/div>\n\n

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\n Failing Gloriously\n <\/h2>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n \n\n

Failing Gloriously<\/em><\/a> (open access) documents Graham’s work \u201d\u2026 through the digital humanities and digital archaeology against the backdrop of the 21st-century university. At turns hilarious, depressing, and inspiring, Graham\u2019s book presents a contemporary take on the academic memoir, but rather than celebrating the victories, he reflects on the failures and considers their impact on his intellectual and professional development. These aren\u2019t heroic tales of overcoming odds or paeans to failure as evidence for a macho willingness to take risks. They\u2019re honest lessons laced with a genuine humility that encourages us to think about making it safer for ourselves and others to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His teaching explores historical methods and digital history at all levels, including seminars in the collaborative MA Digital Humanities<\/strong><\/a> program, as well as in the MA Public History program<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/div>\n\n

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\n The Historian’s Macroscope\n <\/h2>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n \n\n

Graham co-wrote\u00a0 ‘The Historian’s Macroscope<\/a>‘, a handbook to big data in digital history, for undergraduates with Ian Milligian (Waterloo) and Scott Weingart (Carnegie Mellon). The Second Edition was published in 2022<\/a> with Kim Martin (Guelph) as a new author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The open access version of the first edition, along with supplementary materials, may be viewed at http:\/\/themacroscope.org.<\/a> The volume has been translated into standard Chinese<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Graham’s github code repository is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/div>\n\n

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\n Course Trailers\n <\/h2>\n\n <\/header>\n \n \n