Scholars' Lab

@scholarslab.bsky.social

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UVA's Library research center+community lab for practicing interdisciplinary+experimental scholarship around creative+critical tech—informed by digital humanities, spatial tech, SJ, & more 💜🏳️‍🌈 People > projects. 📚💻 Research blog & more at ScholarsLab.org!

Flyer image containing the text "Research Transformation Bootcamp: Kick off the summer Reconnect with your writing Build bridges between your work and the public JUNE 2, 10:30AM - 4:00PM SCHOLARS' LAB (SHANNON 308) SESSIONS INCLUDE: • INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH STORYTELLING • DEVELOPING A SUSTAINABLE SUMMER WRITING PRACTICE • DIY WEBSITES AND CULTIVATING AN ONLINE PRESENCE • PODCASTING AND WORKING WITH AUDIO FILES BONUS SESSION: ZINE-MAKING JUNE 3,10AM-12Pm (SPACE IS LIMITED!)"
Photo grid of the spring class gathering 3D data at various local historical sites and archival collections and processing data at computers
Event graphic that says "Step Inside the Past in Virtual Reality! Archive Archaeology Seminar Students' 3D Reconstructions of a Byzantine Building from the Athenian Agora". A sunny 3D model image of tiled-roof buildings by the sea is captioned "A Twinmotion VR model of Byzantine Athens rooftops from Fotini Kondyli's presentation: at.virignia.edu/athens". More flyer text: "When: 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Monday, April 27 Where: Scholars' Lab in Shannon Library (3rd Floor - Room 308) What: Use VR headsets to explore students' creative work and learn about VR, 3D visualization, and digital archaeology"
Photo by Will Rourk of a telescope dome at the Fan Mountain Observatory, with a 3D scanner in the foreground. The dome looks like a cylindrical white building with 2/3 of a sphere on top, the top looking like it may be constructed of movable overlapping plates.
Closeup photo of a letterpress print by Mark Alan Mattes (Hot Brown Press) of a black and teal wordsearch on white player, with terms including "weave", "weft", and "warp" visible and a small loom illustration print too
A short video showing a large prototype makerspace arrtifact: a cube-like 3D-printed and wood frame and gears, using a motor and electronics to raise and lower a 3D-printed platform roughly shaped like the eventual California area of the map.
Event publicity image with the following text: "Stuck on a draft? Get unstuck in 2 hours or less. Bring your writing project to a guided work session with Heidi Nobles, editor + Associate Professor of Writing & Rhetoric What you get: / Protected writing time / Live editorial coaching / Optional peer feedback v Optional Virtual Editor trained on 20 years of practice What to bring: An idea, a draft, a revision youre stuck on, or a project youre avoiding Come to any or all: MARCH 17 | 10am-12pm | Focus: Idea Development MARCH 27 | 10am-12pm | Focus: Structure & Flow APRIL 15 | 12-2pm | Focus: Sentence-Level Style Scholars Lab |308 Shannon Library Register Brought to you be Writing Across the Curriculum @ UVA and the UVA Library"
Photo of a table spread with supplies for letterpress printing with craft foam letters and shapes: craft foam cut into hearts and Valentines cards sayings, brayers rolling out bright pink and teal inks, and the side of a letterpress press.
Photo of a printer getting ready to make a print on a small tabletop BookBeetle press
Publicity image for "Scholars' Lab presents: Pixel Perlers Workshop. 2/11 6pm-7pm. Shannon 408I" (note this is likely a mistake as the makerspace is in Shannon 308i). The background shows a pixelated autumnal image of a cat sitting on a park bench amid falling leaves.
Flyer for the event with the text: "The Digital Humanities Center presents: LIVING LANGUAGE INFRASTRUCTURE: Current IATH Fellow Mark Sicoli (Anthropology), along with student assistant Emma Broadwater, and Shayne Brandon and Doug Ross of IATH, on Sicoli’s in-progress Fellowship project, Data Back! 12:30 - 2:00 PM SHANNON LIBRARY ROOM 308"
Flyer for the event with the text: "The Digital Humanities Center presents: LIVING LANGUAGE INFRASTRUCTURE: Current IATH Fellow Mark Sicoli (Anthropology), along with student assistant Emma Broadwater, and Shayne Brandon and Doug Ross of IATH, on Sicoli’s in-progress Fellowship project, Data Back! 12:30 - 2:00 PM SHANNON LIBRARY ROOM 308"
Photo of a full room of folks young and old gathered around tables holding BookBeetle tabletop screw presses; they're letterpress printing from type and photopolymer plates
Screenshot from the Data Back website homepage, showing the title and subtitle "Data Back! Building a digital infrastructure for sharing back Zapotecan language documentation for community uses and scholarly collaborations", in front of a photo of a large pile of variously colored corn
Photo of a wood-boothed videogame arcade booth with red and blue buttons and joysticks; the monitor shows a videogame credits list
Photo from the Scholars' Lab Makerspace of a long coral-colored gown on a dress form mannequin, in front of a display of zines teaching how to use various makerspace equipment and boxes of various sewing and making supplies
Photo of a 3D print of a cityscape with skyscraper along two sides of a river; the city is white, and the river is blue filament. It's an actual city, with the forms extruded from mapping data. There are even little boats on the river!
Photo of a desk and window sill in the Scholars' Lab Makerspace in early morning light, showing a sewing machine or serger, and various art such as felted animals and pumpkins, lego cacti, and costumed mannequin dolls
Photo of Dr. Sara Arribas Colmenar presenting on her critical making data art project, which uses colorful string, nails, paint, and photographs to analyze historical social relationships around a major Flamenco event in early 29th-century Spain. Two audience members look on in interest.
Photo of the VR corner of the Scholars' Lab Common Room, showing a square rug, windows into an atrium, and a colorful research string art exhibit on the wall, with multiple panels sharing photos and historical background.
Photo of Scholars' Lab VR expert Arin Bennett displaying point cloud data of a local historical site on a laptop next to a "P is for Point Clouds" poster explaining the data making up that visualization
Short video showing a "flythrough" of the Pine Grove Rosenwald School. It looks slightly grainy because it's made up of a huge number of tiny accurate measured data representing the space as recorded by preservation-grade 3D scanners. It's an old one-room schoolbuilding and attic.
Poster graphic by Jeff Hill that says "ABCs of the UVA Library" with a colorful grid of squares behind each letter of the alphabet, with each letter decorated with something referring to the exhibits associated with that letter, such as a z-folded zine image on the letter Z
An event poster with a speaker photo and the text "There Truly Was a Queer Zine Explosion: How Cartoonists Made Zines & Built Community in the 1990s", a keynote lecture as part of the "Zines Now!" series, by Margaret Galvan of the University of Florida, September 18, 2025, 6:30pm, Campbell 160. Cosponsored by the UVA Department of Art, LIbrary, and Arts Council.
A flyer that says "Zines Now! Zines Now! is a year-long initiative to showcase the history of zines as an art form, highlight future possibilities for making and distributing zines, and facilitate the expression of students’ and community members' passions and priorities now. Fall 2025 events: 1) September 18, 6:30-8:30pm. Keynote Lecture: "There Truly Was a Queer Zine Explosion: How Cartoonists Made Zines and Built Community in the 1990s", with Margaret Galvan. 2) November 5, 10am-12:30pm. Workshop: "Handmade Zine Covers, with Josef Beery". 3) November 11, 5:30pm-7:30pm. Workshop: "Zines for Change", with Jess Walters. More information: https://guides.lib.virginia.edu/blogs/artslibraries/zines-now. Mobile zine cart! Zine display sites! Sponsored by University of Virginia Library and Arts Council.
Decorative inage of two xeroxed-looking grayscale scissors, in the background of all caps sans serif text saying "International Zine Library Day 7/21"
A short video showing a mapping sandbox: a projector displays bands of colored light on top of a topographic formation of sand, to approximate a topographic map in 3D. It looks like hills of sand in a sandbox, with a heat-mapped variety of colors ringing areas to show what elevation they're at. In the video, hands demonstrate how the heatmapping light adjusts to people scooping or building up sand, and then the settings are tweaked to fill in cavities with higher water levels (i.e. blue coloring).
Screenshot of where to go in Adobe Acrobat to set custom printing margin settings: "page setup" button, then "paper size" to "Manage custom sizes..."
Screenshot of a Canva page where I've marked with green, yellow, and red rectangles where the various margins are on a page (margin, bleed, actual printer cutoff where it won't print beyond) if I mke a zine on it and print it with my particular printer.
A single-page minizine, divided into eight pages, with the top row upside-down so it faces correctly when the zine is folded. The zine's title page says "How to make a zine in 5 easy steps", and the following pages share 6 steps with simple text and lots of illustrations on how to make and fold a minizine.
Photo of the Scholars' Lab makerspace and its makers. Makerspace Manager Ammon is in the front holding up the camera high group-selfie-style to show 17 students clustered looking at the camera from the front door to the back of the room, many flashing smiles and peace signs.
Photo collage, a 3 x3 grid of photos showing Will Rourk's Spring 2025 Architectural History class students doing 3D cultural heritage informatics fieldwork including scanning artifacts and old buildings with tech tools like laser and structured light scanners
Event poster with a light pink background and filtered blurry red and blue decorative image, that says "collaborative memory maps & typewriter poetics. Shannon 308; April 25; 4pm. Holly Zhou. A Scholars' Lab Critical Making Fellow Computational Art Showcase."
Closeup photo of a data quilt created by Claudia Berger, showing cream, navy, maize, charcoal, and sage green hand-dyed fabric arranged in blocks and triangles representing data from their research on who the "public" Appalachian Trail was actually designed for, & since used by
A poster with a background photo of Maker Fishmeal, an expert cosplayer creator, in a costume involving bronze armor and yellow fluffy ears. The poster says "Maker Fishmeal is coming to town! Foamsmithing panel, DIY shield workshop, DIY fantasy phone pouch. Photo by @AtomicNetwork".
Photo of a whiteboard with various bits of writing about various things on it, including in large letters "#Makerspace4life!" bordered with a dotted line. A red arrow has been added digitally to point to that text.
Photo of a sheet cake with white frosting, overlaid with a printed-sugar, mostly blue aerial photo of a riverbed moving over time by Daniel Coe
Photo of a person hand showing a hand-width and-length 3D blue dragon wrist-band that wraps around their wrist, over the back of their hand, and up over their middle finger with the dragon's head perched the fingernail
Photo of about 15 tiny 3D-printed pumpkins in bright orange with green handles, crowding the view, in front of a flowered backdrop
Screenhot of spooky Halloween pumpking graphic in front of the event details in the text of the post.
Photo of a container of chocolate-covered candies topped with a yelliw post-it that says "Andrea Roberts' sweetness for SLab"
Screenshot of class description for "Infectious Disease Virtual Reality Museums-BIOL3090 semester long project". It says "Purpose: To appreciate the impact of infectious disease on various regions of the world and the interdisciplinary effort that goes into their control. To learn how to apply conceptual mapping, exhibit design, and virtual reality technology to assist with learning. To work individually and as a group to execute a semester-long project. Groups: Groups of students will be assigned to a region of the world based on their interest, and eventually, will focus on a single disease that afflicts this area of the world. Each group will work together to plan and construct one wing of a virtual reality museum focused on their topics. Group members will have a specific roles that are essential to complete the project. Project Tasks: You will perform a series of tasks throughout the semester to build a project portfolio....
Photo of the VR corner if the Scholars' Lab Common Room, where one person is sharing Reddit data code to a wall monitor from a laptop, a table bears an elaborate pour-over coffee setup and mugs, and another person looks on
Photo of Scholars' Lab Makerspace Manager & Lead Research Technologist Ammon Shepherd presenting in England at the ISAM conference. The slide projected behind him has the title "Mutualism between interdisciplinary student organizations and makerspace"
Photo of a bracelet-glove-like tiny pet dragon craft
Photo of a 3D print of the UVA Shannon Library building, by Scholars' Lab Makerspace Manager and Lead Research Technologist Ammon Shepherd; on the left, the original building half is printed in orange, and on the right, the entirely new portion of the building (replacing the old stacks) is printed in blue. Orange and blue are UVA's school colors.
Flyer for the Scholars' Lab. Text reads: "The UVA Library Digital Humanities Center's SCHOLARS'LAB We are UVA Library's interdisciplinary lab for the critical exploration of technology & culture. As an intentional community, we offer mentoring, collaboration, & supportive space for anyone curious about pushing scholarly boundaries through creative, computational research approaches. While our work often focuses on humanistic questions, we are open to all & welcome collaborations from across campus. Our staff are informed by digital humanities, computer and information science, spatial technologies, maker, and cultural heritage approaches. Email us to learn more or schedule a consultation: scholarslab@virginia.edu. Visit scholarslab.lib.virginia.edu for more"
Photo of creator Alexa Luborsky using the casket crank on a large wooden contraption to spin the three drums of Diaspora Poem, a "poetry machine" meant to symbolize the three diasporas of her family (the Armenian Genocide, Holocaust, and Tetiev Pogrom), while surrounded by the survivors or descendants of forced diaspora that were invited to help lift the shroud off of the machine at the opening on December 1st, 2023.
A Photo of the Scholars' Lab Makerspace room. Makerspace Manager and Lead Research Technologist Ammon Shepherd is in the middle, surrounded by students and other visitors looking at making plans and working on making projects.
Photo of the side of the University of Virginia's main library, behind construction fencing but with a large "opening soon! we look forward to welcoming you in January 2024!" banner