With the launch of the Networking Archaeological Data and Community Institute (NADAC) around the corner, it’s time to introduce the incoming NADAC Scholars!
NADAC is an Institute for Advanced Topics in Digital Humanities, a program supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The NADAC Institute will foster a community of scholars–including graduate students, museum professionals, cultural heritage specialists, public archaeology specialists, academic and research support staff, early career scholars, and tenured faculty–who are working on a variety of digital archaeological data projects. Through expertise- and resource-sharing, collaborative problem-solving, and a robust curriculum of monthly workshops, this professional development Institute brings together an impressive cohort of scholars who will be developing impactful public-facing projects over the course of the next two years.
The Institute received dozens of exceptional applications from a highly qualified pool of scholars, extending invitations to 15 individual projects and seven team projects. This 35-strong cohort of NADAC scholars joins the Institute from 22 institutions across three countries (USA, Germany, and Australia). Through topics ranging from creating digital databases to integrating datasets to data visualization, this outstanding group offers a variety of perspectives and experiences in digital humanities and data management in archaeology. Their projects vary in scale and scope; represent specialties like zooarchaeology, historical archaeology, remote sensing technologies, and geochemistry; focus on a spectrum of cultural contexts across five continents; and cover a range of data types from legacy archives to geospatial data to material culture from the field and in museum collections. The breadth of disciplinary training and project goals of the NADAC cohort provides opportunities for deep discussion of the challenges and contributions of developing accessible, ethical, and sustainable archaeological data for professional, public, student, indigenous, and descendant communities. We are excited to work together and learn from one another over the next few years!
Keep an eye on this blog to follow the Institute’s progress, starting with the first workshop this week.
