Bridget Moynihan (Doctoral Funding: LLC College Research Award and Global Research Scholarship)

Thesis title: Digital Découpage: Reading and Prototyping the Material Poetics and Queer Ephemera of the Edwin Morgan Scrapbooks, 1931-1966

Background

I have degrees in Sociology (BA. Hons., 2013) and English Literature (BA. Hons., 2013, MA, 2015) from the University of Calgary, leading to my current pursuit of a PhD in English Literature supervised by Dr. Anouk Lang at the University of Edinburgh. My PhD research focuses on interpreting the scrapbooks of Edwin Morgan, both through close-reading techinques and through digital humanities tools. In addition to my own dissertation, I am currently collaborating on a Carnegie Trust grant with Dr. Anouk Lang and PhD Candidate Jonathan Armoza on the project "Working from Scraps: Copyright and Materiality as Creative Constraints for Digitally Remediating the Morgan Scrapbooks."

Concurrent to my research, I have held numerous volunteer and employment positions within the University community. I currently volunteer with the Digital Imaging Unit of the University of Edinburgh Library, where I work to enrich the metadata and context of digital artefacts. In previous years, I was employed as a tutor for English Literature 2 in Fall 2017 with the University of Edinburgh; I co-founded, edited, and wrote for IncitingSparks.org, an interdisciplinary arts and humanties website from September 2015-September 2017; I have served as a peer-reviewer for mulitple issues of FORUM: The Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts at Edinburgh; I served as a co-organizer for the Forms of Knowledge interdisclipinary conference (7-8 November 2017), and I have been employed as a research assistant on the Edinburgh University Press's edited editions of Robert Louis Stevenson's works. From December 2015-April 2016, I was employed as a PhD Intern working with EDINA and the Data Library to describe and make discoverable publicly-funded research data sets, and from October 2016-May 2017, I was employed as an PhD Intern evening assistant with the University of Edinburgh Library's Center for Research Collections (CRC). From September 2016-May 2017, I served as co-organizer for the English Literature Work in Progress seminar series, and as the Edinburgh University Student Association (EUSA) 2nd year class representative for English Literature Postgraduate Students.

Beyond the university, I work as a Library Advisor for the City of Edinburgh public libraries and for Armchair Books, a second-hand, rare, and antiquarian bookseller in the heart of Edinburgh. From February-April 2019, I held an internship with the British Library in London working with the notebooks of developmental biologist Anne McLaren.

 

Undergraduate teaching

2017: Tutor for English Literature 2, First Semester (18th and 19th Century) (Department of English, University of Edinburgh)

2014: Teaching Assistant for English 205: Shakespeare (Department of English, University of Calgary)

2010-2012: Teaching Assistant for Managerial Accounting 323 over 6 semesters (Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary)

Research summary

My doctoral research focuses on the scrapbooks of Scottish poet Edwin Morgan (1920-2010), which are held at the University of Glasgow Library Special Collections. My dissertation work interprets and theorizes the Morgan scrapooks through the practices of identity construction, visual poetics, and pre-digital information management that they display. Alongside this work, I am also developing digital interface prototypes based on the scrapbooks that are designed to explore the visual, sonic, and haptic dimensions of these texts. My work therefore seeks to merge the theoretical questions raised by the material and historical dimensions of scrapbooks with a digital praxis. While these prototypes will shed new light on the Morgan scrapbooks, I further argue that they can serve as a test case for experimenting with meaningful digital representations of other ephemeral archival collections.

My research thus broadly explores nineteenth- and twentieth-century print culture and book history, experimental poetics, archive management and digitization challenges, practices of information management, and digital humanities tools.

Past research interests

Prior to my dissertation work, I was a Research Assistant on the Stuff of Science Fiction project at the University of Calgary. This project focuses on a collection of handmade science-fiction anthologies created by Bob Gibson, an avid Canadian collector and fan who amassed over 40,000 pieces of science-fiction, fantasy, and other assorted literature. Our project worked with a subset of 72 anthologies from Gibson's collection that contained the earliest examples of nineteenth-century science fiction and thus offered insights into the development of the genre. The anthologies were digitized, entered into a custom-designed database, and visualized using a tool built by our team, called the Speculative W@nderverse. This tool aims to combine targeted searches with serendipitous discovery in order to increase awareness of what the Gibson collection has to offer and to illustrate the dynamic possibilities of visualization techniques in the representation of cultural collections. More information can be found at http://stuffofsciencefiction.ca or in our team's publications (see publication section of my profile).

Affiliated research centres

Current project grants

Carnegie Trust: Working from Scraps: Copyright and Materiality as Creative Constraints for Digitally Remediating the Morgan Scrapbooks (PI Dr. Anouk Lang [UoE], collaborating with Bridget Moynihan [UoE] and Jonathan Armoza [NYU], £7460, 2017-18)

Past project grants

Innovative Initiative Grant (University of Edinburgh). Co-applicant for Interdisciplinary Posters for an International Conference. 2017. £1245.

Cohort Development Fund (Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities). Co-applicant for Innovative Doctoral Training Event to host a research poster training workshop. 2017. £2000

Student Led Initiative Fund (Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh). Co-applicant with Matthew Tibble for maintaining and expanding the Arts and Humanities website IncitingSparks.org. 2016. £300

Student Led Initiative Fund (Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh). Co-applicant with Matthew Tibble for founding the Arts and Humanities website IncitingSparks.org. 2015. £200

Invited speaker

"Working from Scraps: Digital Interpretations of the Edwin Morgan Scrapbooks". STM Week 2018: Innovations.Congress Centre, London: 5 December 2018. 

"Scrappy Contexts: Archival and Digital Interventions on the Edwin Morgan Scrapbooks". Working Methods/Working Sources.History of Art Postgraduate Research Conference, University of Edinburgh: 5 June 2018. 

Organiser

Co-Organizier of the Forms of Knowledge Conference, University of Edinburgh, 7-8 November 2017. Keynote: Sandra Laugier, Full Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne and Scientific Deputy Director at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (INSHS) at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) http://www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk/overlap/conference-autumn-2017/

 

Papers delivered

"Cut and Queered: Reading the Collage and Scrapbook Logics of Edwin Morgan's Poetry" Disrupting Narratives: New Perspectives on Collage, Edinburgh College of Art: 27 July 2019

Anouk Lang, Bridget Moynihan, and Jonathan Armoza. "Database Aesthetics and Ergodic Ephemerality: Remediating the Scrapbooks of Edwin Morgan." DH2019, Utrecht: 9-12 July 2019.

“Records of Identity: Remediating the Edwin Morgan Scrapbooks.”New Perspectives: Digital Identities Digital Humanities Conference. Kings College London: 18-19 May 2018.

“Scrappy Contexts: Archival and Digital Interventions on the Edwin Morgan Scrapbooks”. Collage in History, Practice, and Theory event, Collage, Montage, Assemblage: Collected and Composite Forms, 1700-Present conference. Edinburgh: 17-19 April 2018.

“Exploring Ephemeral Archives Through Interfaces”. Presentation and open house event showcasing digital prototypes built in collaboration with Jonathan Armoza. University of Edinburgh: 11 April, 2018 and University of Glasgow: 20 April 2018

"Exploring Edwin Morgan's Scrapbooks and Concrete Poetry Through Eye Tracking". POSTER. Forms of Knowledge Overlap 2017, University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh: 7 November 2017. 

"Looking Out to Move Ahead: Reading and Digitizing the 'Prismatic Fringes' of Archives".  Canadian Society for the Digital Humanities/ Société canadienne des humanités numériques. Toronto: 26 May - 2 June 2017. 

"Destabilizing Genres: The Science of Edwin Morgan’s Poetry". Messenger to the Stars Science Fiction and Fantasy International Conference. Lisbon: 16-18 November 2016. 

“Clippings from the Fringe: Interpreting the Edwin Morgan Scrapbooks.” Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing Annual Conference. Paris: 18-22 July 2016.

“Unpacking the Edwin Morgan Scrapbooks.” Archival Uncertainties International Conference. British Library, London: 4 Apr. 2016.

“Data Visualizations and the Gibson Anthologies.” Modern Language Association Annual Conference. Vancouver: 8 Jan. 2015. Co-Presentation with Stefania Forlini and Uta Hinrichs

“Literary Mutations: Varieties of Science-Fictional Discourse: 1840-1899.” North American Victorian Studies Association Annual Conference. University of Western Ontario: 15 Nov. 2014. Co-Presentation with Stefania Forlini.

“The Stuff of Science Fiction: An Experiment in Literary History.” Digital Humanities SummerInstitute. University of Victoria: 5 June 2014. Co-Presentation with Stefania Forlini.

“From Artwork to App: The Incorporation of the Digital in A Humument.” The Page: Visual and Material Literature Graduate Conference. University of Ottawa: 15 Mar. 2014.

“Marked Victories: Tracing the Scarred Material Record of Bruno Schulz.” Free-Exchange Graduate Conference. University of Calgary: 10 Mar. 2013.

“Tree of Codes: A Book Unbound.” Literary Eclectic VII  Graduate Conference, Refereed. University of Regina: 22 Sept. 2012.

Bridget Moynihan and Akmal Putra. Prototyping the Archival Ephemeral: Experimental Interfaces for the Edwin Morgan Scrapbooks.Digital Studies/le Champ Numérique, 9(1), January 2019.

Uta Hinrichs, Stefania Forlini, and Bridget Moynihan. In Defense of Sandcastles: Research Thinking Through Visualization in Digital Humanities. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, November 2018.

Stefania Forlini, Uta Hinrichs, and Bridget Moynihan. The Stuff of Science Fiction: An Experiment in Literary History. Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ); Digital Humanities Summer Institute Colloquium Special Issue, 2016.

Uta Hinrichs, Stefania Forlini and Bridget Moynihan. Speculative Practices: Utilizing InfoVis to Explore Untapped Literary Collections. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proceedings Visualization / Information Visualization, October 2015), 22(1):429-438, 2016