Introducing the 2020-2021 ECDS Fellows

Banner featuring square-cropped headshots of three ECDS fellows

We warmly welcome three Emory University doctoral candidates who join the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship (ECDS) as digital scholarship fellows for 2020-2021. Each of our fellows have provided a brief introduction about themselves and their fellowship role below.

Emory Libraries/Emory Center for Digital Scholarship (ECDS) offer the Digital Humanities and Data Services fellowship positions annually (in partnership with the Laney Graduate School) to advanced graduate students expecting to complete their dissertations by the end of the fellowship period. These fellows support projects in digital scholarship, computer-based research, and electronic publishing; our fellows collaborate with interdisciplinary teams of researchers, librarians, writers, and technologists; and they serve as project researchers, content administrators, editorial associates, and reviewers for the academic year. This also marks the second year that ECDS has offered the David R. Scott fellowship in conjunction with work on the Apollo 15 collection, donated to Emory University by Commander David Scott.

Xanda Lemos; Digital Humanities Fellow

Xanda is a PhD Candidate in Latin American History at Emory University. Her dissertation focuses on Brazilian countercultural movements and examines the intersections between youth culture, music, and spirituality in Brazil during the military rule (1964-1985). By exploring the emergence of alternative cultural practices and youth identities in dictatorial Brazil, she aims at furthering our understanding of how seemingly apolitical youth engage with popular culture under authoritarian regimes. Her research methods range from music analysis to oral history and archival research.

As the 2020-2021 ECDS Fellow in Digital Humanities, Xanda works as an associate editor for the open-access, peer-reviewed online journal Atlanta Studies. In addition to managing the publication process (review, copy-editing, website updates) she will help coordinate the journal’s social media communications. Xanda Lemos is excited to work with ECDS and eager to collaborate with interdisciplinary teams of editors, authors, librarians, and researchers to support ongoing and future projects on digital scholarship.

Halley Riley; Data Services Fellow

Halley is a PhD Candidate in Behavioral, Social and Health Education sciences. She is passionate about family planning and is completing a mixed-methods dissertation exploring how perceptions of contraceptive safety impact method use among people who can get pregnant in the U.S.. Her overarching career goal is to generate knowledge that can empower young people to make fully informed decisions about their reproductive lives. Halley has taught both quantitative and qualitative data analysis courses at Rollins School of Public Health. She loves helping students gain self-efficacy surrounding their analytic skills.

As the ECDS Data Services Fellow, Halley is excited about working with students and other members of the Emory community to troubleshoot data-related questions, including identifying, cleaning, and preparing data. She will also lead workshops on advanced statistical analyses. She is looking forward to using her teaching and analytic skills to help others with their data-related woes!

Dimitri Zaras; David R. Scott Fellow

Dimitri is a PhD Candidate in the Sociology Department at Emory University. He studies precarious work, mass media organizations, and evaluation of cultural products. In his dissertation, he examines the field of art journalism as a case study of precarious work in the cultural industries. In particular, he focuses on how gender inequality, oversupply of aspiring potential workers, and the advent of online media organizations shape the career advancement strategies and work practices of art journalists. Dimitri studies those topics by incorporating quantitative data analysis, data visualization, and computational text analysis methods in his dissertation research.

As a David R. Scott fellow, he will assist with research and development of the Apollo 15 Learning Hub. Dimitri will be employing digital scholarship methods to assemble and make accessible a variety of primary source materials from the Apollo 15 mission to build an interactive educational resource for researchers and students.