CDH Exit Interview: Emily McGinn

Friday was HC3 Curriculum Specialist Emily McGinn’s last day working with us at the Center for Digital Humanities.

Emily was an important part of our team at the CDH. Among many, many other contributions, she offered her expertise on teaching DH (see, for example, her recent blog post on “Creating an Argument from Data”), taught her own iteration of our Introduction to Digital Humanities course in spring 2022, helped organize our Douglass Day Transcribe-a-Thon, and served on the committee to determine the winner of our Senior Thesis Prize.

Earlier this year, her hard work even earned her a Tiger Award from Princeton Human Resources!

Next, Emily will join the Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University as digital humanities librarian. Before she left Princeton, we asked her a few questions about her time at the CDH.

What is a favorite moment with a student at Princeton?

I loved working with undergrads in HUM 346 [Introduction to Digital Humanities], and grads in both the HDTF [Humanities Data Teaching Fellows], and the Grad Fellows programs. As with our consultations, I love listening to the projects they have in mind and scoping it down into small, attainable pieces. For both students and faculty, focusing on what can be done today, this semester, and this year is so liberating and frees them from being overwhelmed by the big picture.

You were a team of one at the University of Georgia, where you worked before joining the CDH. What was it like being part of the larger CDH team? What will your team be like in the next position, and what are you looking forward to / what do you think you'll miss?

It was so fun to work with the CDH team, all of whom brought different perspectives and different brains to the conversation. This diversity of thought allowed for a powerful process of creation. I won’t have a team per se in my next role, but am looking forward to building a similar cohort of thinkers and creators there as soon as I can.

We will miss you, Emily! We are looking forward to seeing all you accomplish in Baltimore!