What is the Undergraduate Fellowship in the Digital Humanities?

The UFDH program seeks to promote the exploration and use of digital humanities (DH) tools and formats and support undergraduate students who want to conduct humanities research that integrates innovative digital tools and methods. As part of the fellowship, undergraduate fellows learn about DH methods, including digital storytelling, information visualization, mapping, and text analysis. The program culminates in the fellows producing a digital humanities project prototype focused on their interests. Topics range from local histories, community stories, and digital media culture to medical humanities, environmental humanities, and the intersections between the arts/creative works.

Students interested in learning about a range of digital humanities research skills and prototyping their own digital project are encouraged to apply in spring quarter for the following summer cohort!  

Check out the Digital Humanities Guide to learn more about DH theory and practice and for an overview of DH methods, tools, and resources!

2026 Program Details

The School of Humanities, in partnership with UC Irvine Libraries and the Digital Humanities Exchange (DHX), is pleased to announce that five students were selected for the 2026 UFDH program! These students will receive a fellowship to participate in workshops, conduct research, and design a digital project prototype. Students will present their work in a showcase in fall quarter. 

Learn more about previous projects below!

Josh Chan, 2023 Program Participant
		I was inspired to pursue this project because of my personal relationship to the subject and it gave me an opportunity to explore narratives and questions from the field of humanities that I have been interested in for the last few years. This program has equipped me with new tools to help me better engage with the humanities, specifically in regard to efficient research techniques and new ways of presenting research narratives. Going forward, the lessons I have taken away from this program will prove to be a solid foundation as I further explore humanities research and telling cultural stories. I believe this opportunity would prove to be invariably beneficial for all students who participate as it not only enables them to pursue topics they are interested in that might not be covered in the classroom but will also help them expand their view on a field that has, more likely than not, been presented in a narrow fashion for much of their life.

Program History

2025
The 4th annual Undergraduate Fellowship in the Digital Humanities (UFDH) consisted of a cohort of five undergraduate Humanities student fellows who participated in a four-week Digital Humanities Accelerator program, learning about digital humanities research methods, then conducted independent research during fall quarter to prototype their own projects. The program culminated in the second annual Digital Humanities Student Fellows Showcase in December 2025!

Jenna Josserand, History major
Topic: The American Civil War: Textbooks, Teaching, and Discrepancy in K-12 Historical Education

Geneses Navarro, English major
Topic: Parable of the Sower: Mapping Fires, Fiction and Reality

Rachael Lee, Korean Literature and Culture and Language Science major
Topic: Urinara, Urimal: The Creation, Preservation, and Expression of Korean

Angela Ter-Martirosyan,  History and Biological Sciences major
Topic: Superstition, Hauntings, and the Armenian Genocide in Kurdish Collective Memory

Samantha Beknazarova, English major
Topic: Construction of Soviet Cultural Identity Through Children’s Media

2024
The 3rd annual USFDH was generously sponsored by a donation to UCI's School of Humanities and was co-directed by Professor Braxton Soderman, Professor Yong Chen, and the UCI Libraries. In 2024, eight undergraduate students in the School of Humanities explored a wide range of topics and approaches and the program culminated in the first annual Digital Humanities Student Fellows Showcase!

Learn more about the 2024 USFDH fellows' research:

Corinna Siu Mun Lee Chin, Literary Journalism major
Topic: Tracing Egg Foo Young within Books and Articles on Chinese American Cuisine

Gisele Valdovinos, History and Education Sciences major
Topic: Life in the Fields: The Lives of Imperial Valley Farm Workers During the Emergence of the UFW

Sebastián Calderón, History major
Topic: The Yost Theater Project: A Cultural Hub for Latinos in Orange County, California

Ariana Vargas, English and Asian American Studies major
Topic: Transnational Perspectives: Filipino American Political Art, 1972-1986

Adilene Garcia Hernandez, History major
Topic: Legacies of the 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill: A Catalyst for Environmental Consciousness

Lily Victoria Amidon, History and Gender & Sexuality Studies major
Topic: Built on Hope: The Feminist Star Wars Project

Sissi Kang, Art History and Comparative Literature major
Topic: Vision Through Films: Women's Internalization of a Surveyor Male under Men's Promise of Power

2023
The 2nd annual UC Irvine Undergraduate Summer Fellowship in the Digital Humanities was generously sponsored by a donation to UCI's School of Humanities and was co-directed by Professors Deanna Shemek and Yong Chen, as well as Madelynn Dickerson, Head of Digital Scholarship Services at UCI Libraries. In 2023, two undergraduate students in the School of Humanities had the opportunity to learn about digital humanities tools and research methods, develop a hypothetical project plan, and then build a prototype sample. The two fellows were:

Josh Chan, English major
Topic: Explored the culture and history of Japanese Americans in Hawaii through Shirokiya, a local grocery store

Jennellee Samkhem, Comparative Literature major
Topic: Studied Cambodian music with a focus on pop music during the wartime period.

2022
The inaugural program in 2022 was sponsored by a generous donation to UC Irvine's School of Humanities, and co-directed by Professors Deanna Shemek and Yong Chen and the Research Librarian for Digital Humanities, History, and African American Studies. The four inaugural fellows were:

Dee Richards, English major
Topic: The Mark of the Minotaur Twitterbot

Jonathan Ripetoe, English major
Topic: Double Consciousness Twitter Data Visualization

Rehana Morita, Film & Media Studies and Asian American Studies major
Topic: Undocumented Students of UCI Podcast

Ruth Belay,  African American Studies major
Topic: Black Student Activism at UCI Oral History Collection