The Geography Department’s own Julian Barr and Lauren Drakopulos have each been awarded the Simpson Center's Mellon Summer Fellowship for Public Projects in the Humanities.
The fellowship will allow Lauren to continue working with Washington Sea Grant, an agency she has been partnering with through her work in the Public Scholarship program. Lauren is excited to explore digital storytelling through maps, and plans to use the fellowship to think critically about the role of maps, and science communications more broadly, in shaping public understanding of the environment and conservation.
Julian will be using the summer fellowship to create a digital tour of the Northwest Lesbian and Gay History Museum Project walking tour of Pioneer Square. The tour was originally developed in the 1990s and then was passed down to Professors Michael Brown and Larry Knopp. Last summer Julian was able to update the tour and then present it at a conference in Seattle. The updating inspired this new project where he will continue the process of updating the tour and to digitize the tour. The digitizing of the tour will allow folks to take a digital version of the tour from anywhere. Julian will also develop an audio walking tour to go with the project so that someone could actually walk the tour physically while listening to the tour information.
Click here to read more about the Fellowship, as well as the application for Fall of 2017 funding round.