5 years ago, on the 23rd October 2017, after many months of planning and construction work, the Digital Humanities Lab officially opened. Since then we’ve supported teaching and research through a pandemic, collaborated with academics and cultural heritage institutions on research projects, created many exciting digital resources and websites, worked with 28 undergraduate interns, digitised 100s of cassettes to preserve recordings for future use, worked with Exeter City FC, developed websites and databases for research projects, taken 1000s of high quality photographs of rare books and manuscripts including the Exeter Book and the University of Exeter archive, supported podcast and film recordings, created RTI and 3D printed models for archaeology and a whole lot more.
To celebrate our 5th birthday we will be running open day events throughout the term – keep an eye on our upcoming events or twitter to join us!
In the meantime, lets look back to where the lab began!
In the summer of 2016, this corner of the Queens building featured an archaeology equipment store, a bike rack and some very exciting recycling bins. And then the diggers showed up…
By October, the iconic teal cube was starting to take shape.
As the lab spaces came together, the team were allowed in to have a look round.
The old storage area went through a pretty radical transformation, from storing equipment during construction…
Into our cosy breakout space!
The new upstairs office was decorated.
The new seminar room looked a little bleak to begin with…
But not for long!
And then the video wall team arrived, and after much hard work, set up our enormous 4k screen.
And the lab was ready to welcome workshops, seminars, students, archival collections and lots and lots of digitisation equipment!
It’s been a great 5 years in the lab since we opened. We currently have a team of 11 staff members and 6 student interns, and we’re looking forward to continuing our wide range of exciting projects and collaborations.
We’re always delighted to welcome people to the lab, so join us for our birthday events, or get in touch at digitalhumanities@exeter.ac.uk to discuss about having a look round or collaborating on a project.
Here’s to the next 5 years!
What an interesting history of the building.