Isabel Moon

Hi! I’m Isabel and I’m a second-year history student. I have always been passionate about preserving the lives and history of people before us as well as widening the availability of historical collections. For this reason, I am interested in growing my skills around digitisation and digital collections at the Lab. I was attracted to the lab internship because of the opportunity to advance from working with pre-digitised materials, as I had before, to having a more hands-on role within the digitisation process. In addition to this, I was inspired by the opportunity to use technology to look in more detail at historical artefacts and discover aspects about them we might never have before. I look forward to working with technology that will widen our view into the past and expand the availability of collections across both academic and public audiences.

Maya Skelton

Hi, I’m Maya – a third year studying History. After volunteering with the Lab in first year, I am incredibly excited to have been welcomed back to the DH family to learn more about the fab world of digitisation. I am fascinated by the educational potential for digital humanities; with 3D modelling and photogrammetry providing opportunities for museums and collections to become ‘hands on’ in a truly accessible way. In the future I want to work as a fashion history researcher and designer, and so the opportunity also to work with a variety of materials is immensely exciting. I am also the President of the History Society, and work with the Historical Association to deliver a range of talks and volunteer programmes, and so am excited for a potential future volunteer scheme with the Lab to promote first-year participation throughout the Humanities Department.

Jess Mountford

Hi! I’m Jess, a third year Liberal Arts student majoring in Philosophy. I’m passionate about making knowledge accessible to as many people as possible, which is what originally drew me to apply to be a Digital Humanities Intern. Having worked in the lab for a few weeks now, I feel that I’ve learnt so much more about the specific techniques and equipment involved in conservation and digitisation. Currently, I’m keen to learn more about 3D modelling and 3D printing - there is enormous potential to use these technologies to make artefacts more accessible to the public, and in terms of returning original artefacts to their country of origin and replacing them with 3D replicas. I am also excited to use the RTI equipment to analyse wax seals and embossing found on old letters. I’m sure as the year goes on I’ll find many more areas of interest, and I’m looking forward to being involved in lots of different projects!

Heide Elton-Miller

Eve Alderson
BA History and French
I’m Eve, a fourth year History and French student. As an aspiring archivist I am particularly interested in 2D digitisation techniques which allow us to study more closely and preserve historical documents and manuscripts, as well as the use of digital archives, to make them accessible to the wider public. I am really excited to have the opportunity to get experience in using the specialist equipment in the Lab and to get involved in projects alongside the Digital Humanities team.

Francis Elsender
BA Theology
I’m Francis, a third year theology student with a great love of all emerging technologies and how they can facilitate new ways of learning about the arts and humanities. Traditional teaching methods can be limiting as people learn in a variety of different ways and as such, my interests lie in assisting with the creation of all the media resources that the lab produces. From podcasts to videos, my hope is they can inspire others to be interested in the humanities whilst showcasing the best of what the lab has to offer.

Sophie Hammond
BA History
I’m Sophie, a final year History student. I am particularly interested in 2D digitisation and preservation of historical material. I also hope to learn more about the process of 3D printing during my year as a Digital Humanities Intern. I believe that the immersive experiences achieved by 3D printing provide an incredibly innovative way for mass audiences to access the past from a fresh and unique perspective. To be at the forefront of Digital Humanities research is an exciting prospect, as is the opportunity to make documents and artefacts accessible to a diverse audience.

Laura Jones
BA History and Archaeology
Hi, I’m Laura, a second year History and Archaeology student. What attracted me to the Digital Humanities was the accessibility and preservation of heritage, its wider interdisciplinary approach and how its application shapes creativity and innovation. Specifically, I am interested in how the Digital Humanities are used for landscapes such as townscapes and structural features within them in archaeology through the use of 3D techniques, GIS and LiDAR. I also wish to explore how photogrammetry and RTI can be used to provide extra visualisation and interpretation of artefacts.

Jordan Lloyd-Head
BA History
I’m Jordan, a second year History student. I am interested in Digital Humanities primarily because of its collaborative and creative nature, involving multiple skills types, disciplines and people which provide new ways of thinking about the past. I am particularly fascinated by 2D digitisation and archival photography as a new way of engaging with historical artefacts and texts and look forward to developing these skills further this year.

Tumisang Mbedzi
BSc Archaeology with Forensic Science
I am a 3rd year Archaeology and Forensic Science student with a keen interest in 3D printing techniques and photogrammetry I have high anticipation the experience will contribute to answering some of the questions I have with emphasis on 3D manipulation and structure building to represent ancient hominin species. This will be a great opportunity to learn and expand my horizons in the field with an increasing versatility.

Ciprian Lungescu
BA Archaeology 

Connor Spence
BA English

Corey Hamilton
BA English

Dan Brock
BA Ancient History and Archaeology

Eleanor Mason
BA Classics and Ancient History 

Ollie Anthony
BA Archaeology and Anthropology

Daniel Wakefield
BA English

Emily Earp
BA English 

Hannah Britton
BA Archaeology

Hannah Houghton
BA English

Eleanor Mason
BA Classics and Ancient History

Keziah Pugh
BA History and Spanish

Laura Jones - BA History and Archaeology

How has your internship at the Digital Humanities Lab helped you to prepare for work and study? 

Coming back into university as a mature student who has already had a career, the internship has helped me develop the skills such as leadership and creativity that I already had. It has also helped me look at how to conduct further research in fields I am interested in and how to apply digital techniques to them. Something which will help me when pursuing the next stage of my degree and future opportunities.

What are your career plans/ destinations? 

As I am now at the end of my second year, I am looking for a placement in industry, where I hope I can apply my digital skills further in different contexts. Before the internship I was set on working within museums or archaeological research but the internship has now made me question this. I know wonder how I could apply my Digital Humanities knowledge to careers I like and research I want to carry out. It also has made me look into careers within archaeology/cultural heritage that are linked to digital skills. I hope when I return to Exeter in last year after placement I can use my knowledge within my dissertation.

What are your ambitions for career progression? 

In relation to career progression, I wish to still progress to roles that are linked to cultural preservation but looking at it from different angles that do include digital preservation. I also have a great interest in GIS applications and its role within cultural heritage, so this is a field I think I may also want to progress within at some point.

Can you recommend any careers in cultural heritage or subject related areas with a digital element, Humanities data or libraries & archives for Exeter applicants? 

Digital Preservationist, Digital Archives Assistant, Project Archivist, GIS consultant, Software Engineer, Geospatial Data Scientist, Project Supervisor, Post-excavation Officer (in Archaeology), Curator.

Eve Alderson - BA History and French

How has your Internship at the Digital Humanities Lab helped you to prepare for work and study? 

This internship has allowed my develop skills both digital humanities related and more general to the world of work. With regard to my DH skills, I have had the opportunity to be trained in 2D and 3D Digitisation, 3D printing and Audio-Visual techniques,which will all be useful as I hope to enter a career in cultural heritage in the future. More generally, tasks such as working behind the desk, loaning equipment, looking after the lab spaces and providing technical support have all enabled me to develop my skills in communication, organisation and teamwork.

What are your career plans/ destinations? 

Having just completed my BA in History and French, I am looking to go into further study next year. I plan to undertake an MSc in Museum Studies at the University of Glasgow where I can use and further develop the digital skills I have learnt during this internship, with the end goal of establishing a career in cultural heritage.

What are your ambitions for career progression? 

After completing my masters, I aspire to build a career within museums and heritage where I can hopefully progress to a senior/leadership role, using the skills I have developed during my time as an intern in the Digital Humanities Lab.

Can you recommend any careers in cultural heritage or subject related areas with a digital element, Humanities data or libraries & archives for Exeter applicants?  

Curator, Librarian, Archivist, Digital Preservationist, Conservator, Academic, Digital Archivist.

Daniel Brock - BA Ancient History and Archaeology

Hi! I'm Dan, a recent Ancient History and Archaeology graduate of the University of Exeter. I spent my third and final year of study working 10-15 hours a week as an Advisory Intern at the Digital Humanities Lab before graduating and becoming a full time member of the Digital Humanities Team.

What are the work and study progressions you made following your Exeter graduation and Internship at the DH Lab? 

After graduation, I spent further year working at the Lab as the Technical Assistant. This was the perfect choice for me because it meant that I could actively engage with research across the College of Humanities whilst saving towards the cost of a Master’s degree – an MSc in Geographical Information Science at the University of Edinburgh.

How has your Internship at the Digital Humanities Lab helped you to prepare for work and study?

Working at the Digital Humanities Lab was a wonderful opportunity which complimented my studies perfectly.  The role allowed me to develop technical knowledge and engage with research structures within the University which I wouldn't otherwise have had the opportunity to do. It enabled me to contribute meaningfully to research within the College and work with academics in a professional capacity.

Tell us about your current work, study or Internship…

Upon graduating, I had the wonderful chance to take on a full-time role at the Lab, taking responsibility for the day-to-day running of the Lab spaces and on-the-job training of our fantastic intern team. This role enabled me to remain a part of this unique team and research environment. 

What are your ambitions for career progression?

It's difficult to know exactly what the future holds. I certainly hope to have completed my master’s degree by the end of 2021, and to then move into a career in research – possibly by pursuing a PhD. Whatever the case, I'm sure that I'll have plenty of opportunities which wouldn't otherwise have been available to me if not for my time at the Digital Humanities Lab.

Sophie Hammond - BA History

How has your Internship at the Digital Humanities Lab helped you to prepare for work and study?

The Digital Humanities internship has provided me with invaluable experience of working within a dynamic and energetic team. As teamwork is a core aspect of the internship, I have developed strong communicational skills and have enjoyed being able to contribute my ideas within group discussions. Working on the Advisory Desk has also allowed me to strengthen my organisational skills, as well as developing my confidence when helping clients. These skills are highly transferable and will be very beneficial in any future job.

What are your career plans/ destinations?

As a History student, I am very interested in making the past accessible to a broad audience. My experience of 2D digitisation in the Lab has sparked my interest in digital preservation, and I would like to pursue a career in this area. I am also very interested in how Digital Humanities interacts with arts, culture and heritage and am looking to gain further experience in this sector.

What are your ambitions for career progression?

I am currently planning on taking a year out to travel, before applying for graduate jobs that commence in London next summer. In this time, I have also applied for a remote internship with an archive in Cornwall. I am excited to explore the possible career paths within Digital Humanities, as there are so many interesting job opportunities available!

Ollie Anthony - BA Archaeology and Anthropology (Exeter) & MSc Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology (Oxford)

What are the work and study progressions you made following your Exeter graduation and Internship at the DH Lab?

Since completing my summer internship with the Digital Humanities Lab in September 2019, I soon after began studying for my Master’s in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology at the University of Oxford, as a member of St Cross College. Much like my time I spent at Exeter, I have been quite active in making use of the University’s careers service and so have been fortunate to secure some further work alongside my studies. In particular, I have recently carried out an internship with the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation (IHJR), based in the Netherlands. My objectives were to carry out research for selected sites of contested history, such as statues, street names and monuments, and to write a report based on one or two of these.

How did your Internship at the Digital Humanities Lab help you to prepare for work and study?

One of the more obvious skills I developed whilst working at the Lab was my ability to use a variety of digital software. I have since found it much easier to work with new and similar programmes, such as during my time volunteering with the Ashmolean Museum. I worked on a project digitising a collection of early print portraits and, despite the software being different to those used in the Lab, I was able to understand the processes and functions much quicker than had I tried with no prior experience.

More broadly, I have found that my time management and organisational skills have massively improved since working with the Lab in Exeter. Being responsible for bookings in the Lab calendar enabled me to develop management skills which have been invaluable throughout my Masters, with substantially increased workloads compared to my undergraduate study.

Tell us about your current work, study or Internship…

The course I am currently enrolled on (MSc in Visual Material and Museum Anthropology, or VMMA for short) offers students the chance to explore some of the most exciting issues in anthropology today, particularly in developing a critical understanding of meanings and practices surrounding material and visual culture in different cultural contexts. I am lucky enough to have the Pitt Rivers Museum as a tool to aid in this exploration and look forward to writing my dissertation up over the next few months within which I will be questioning the role of conservation in museum contexts.

What are your ambitions for career progression?

Of course, my career plans are very much up in the air at the minute, particularly with the impact of the Coronavirus lockdown on museums now coming to light. Another internship I secured, with the intention of beginning in September, was with Perm University in Russia as a Museums and Archaeology intern, also working with their Digital Humanities facilities (my experience with the Lab in Exeter was, again, useful in securing this internship), however this has sadly been cancelled. Between now and the end of my course I will therefore be on the lookout for any job openings with relevance to heritage or curation, potentially as an Assistant Curator or Research Assistant.

Katie Learmont - BA History (Exeter) & MA Library and Information Studies (UCL)

What are the work and study progressions you made following your work at the DH Lab?

After I left the Digital Humanities Lab as the lab’s Technical Assistant I joined the civil service as an assistant librarian. It has been non-stop ever since!

How did your work at the Digital Humanities Lab help you to prepare for work and study?

The tasks I perform currently are quite different to the ones I undertook working at the Digital Humanities Lab, as whilst the lab is heritage-based and still deals with physical objects for digitisation I now work for the civil service in a fully digital library. However, working in the lab helped me to manage staff and projects effectively, provide excellent customer service and organise Outlook mailboxes, all of which have been very practical and useful skills for my current role! The library I work in now also produces maps for government departments using a software called ArcGIS and I probably wouldn’t know what on earth GIS software was had I not worked at the lab or learned about digital humanities! The Lab Manager Emma was also very helpful in providing tips and advice for career progression, such as how I could become CILIP accredited.

I think the fact that I am now working in quite a different environment demonstrates how great becoming a technical assistant or advisory intern is for developing one’s career, it gives you so many options and makes you very multi-skilled! You can go off and work in museums or galleries, or you can go down the more IT/ technical side of things. Increasingly companies are looking for more and more job candidates with digital humanities related skills.

Tell us about your current work, study or Internship…

At the moment I’m working as an Assistant Librarian at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, which is fascinating and very busy! I work for the Knowledge and Information Management Team (KIM Team) which deals with information management services, maps, library work and managing the staff intranet and other Office 365 platforms. I mainly work on the library side, so my tasks include providing users with subscriptions to publications (e.g. the Economist), purchasing and promoting new library resources and publishing information on the staff intranet. There are opportunities to move around the team and shadow other parts of the office, meaning there is never a dull moment!

What are your ambitions for career progression?

Ideally I would like to work my way up the library career ladder, so in 5 years’ time I aim to be a librarian and then after that a senior librarian, gradually building up my skills and increasing my responsibilities. However, as there’s always the debate about whether libraries as we know them will still exist in the future, so maybe I won’t be in a traditional ‘librarian’ role but something like an information policy officer or similar. I would quite like to stay in the civil service, but I’ve also enjoyed working in art and academic libraries so maybe I’ll try working in a different sector in the future if I get bored! Working at the Foreign Office has also given me food for thought about whether to stay in libraries at all, maybe I’ll go overseas or become an ambassador…

Connor Spence - BA English

How has your Internship at the Digital Humanities Lab helped you to prepare for work and study? 

I have not graduated as of yet, but I have used the experience gained from my Digital Humanities Advisory Internship to take a project role, and apply for various other roles in the university, including on the new Project Enhance.

My role at the Digital Humanities Lab gave me a knowledge of the inner workings of University, and what it is like to work there rather than be a student. It gave me a great opportunity to be a part of active research projects, making discoveries and helping academics to further their field which is a great fun and looks good on CV’s when applying for jobs in the future. It has also given me knowledge into very specialist areas of humanities, which I will certainly take forward into my teaching, but may also further with my own dissertation project.

Tell us about your current work, study or Internship…

My current role is as Research Intern (Impact) for the AHRC funded Famine Tales project. My role involves speaking closely with our collaborators and artists in India and sharing the work that we do with the public. This is currently being done through our social media accounts, but as soon as the world opens up more, will be done through the exhibitions we are creating in London and Exeter.

What are your ambitions for career progression? 

I have a couple of options for progression, which I have not yet decided upon. One of my options is to continue to further study, inspired by my work within the Digital Humanities Lab. There are a number of masters schemes in the UK and around the world (like that at UBCO where I visited last year) that focus on Digital Humanities and my experiences as an intern in the Lab set me up perfectly to undertake these. If I don’t go into academia, I will use the digital skills I have garnered to help me in whatever field I choose to go into. Knowledge of technology (especially Word, Outlook and Excel) are vital in all workplaces, and my experience with these in the Lab will prove vital.