PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS
Principal Investigator and Project Director
Dr. David Neville is founding Director of the Grinnell College Immersive Experiences Lab (GCIEL) and a Digital Liberal Arts Specialist at Grinnell College. He holds a PhD in German Language and Literature, with an emphasis in Medieval Studies and Latin, from Washington University in St. Louis and a MS in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences from Utah State University. He has published on topics related to immersive learning environments, instructional games and simulations, problem-based learning, and the medieval period in Digital Philology, ReCALL, The Foreign Language Annals, Simulation & Gaming, Computer Assisted Language Learning, Journal of Interactive Teaching and Pedagogy, and Mystics Quarterly. His research interests include situated cognition, virtual reality, and digital game-based learning approaches to second language and culture acquisition.
Co-Principal Investigator and Core Faculty Lead
Dr. Timothy D. Arner is Associate Dean of Curriculum and Academic Programs and Professor of English at Grinnell College. He received his PhD in English from The Pennsylvania State University, with an emphasis in medieval studies. His research and teaching interests include the influence of classical texts on Middle English poetry and the intersections between literature and politics in the medieval world. He has published articles in the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, The Chaucer Review, Comparative Literature, Medium Ævum, and Studies in Philology. He collaborated with a group of students to produce The Grinnell Beowulf, a translation and critical edition of the Old English poem.
Co-Principal Investigator and Core Faculty Lead
Dr. Austin Mason is founding Director of the Digital Arts & Humanities minor program, Assistant Director of the Humanities Center for Digital Humanities, and Lecturer in History at Carleton College, where his responsibilities include integrating digital methods deeply into the Liberal Arts curriculum and co-supervising Digital Humanities Associate and Digital Scholarship Intern undergraduate programs. He holds a PhD in History from Boston College, with an emphasis on religious history, material culture, archaeology, spatial humanities and the digital humanities, and an M.St. in Medieval British History from Oxford University. His current book project, Listening to the Early Medieval Dead: Religious Practices in England, c.400-900 CE has been supported by grants from ACLS and the Mellon Foundation and was awarded the CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award in the Humanities. He teaches courses on early medieval Europe, the Vikings, and DH methods, and is currently working on a number of 3D DH projects, ranging from photogrammetry of early medieval English religious material culture to VR, GIS and video game projects in collaboration with scholars of colonial America, eighteenth-century Britain, and nineteenth-century Luxembourg.
PROJECT ADVISORS
Museum Advisor: Viking Museum Haithabu
Dr. Volker Hilberg is archaeologist and authorized vice director of the State Archaeological Museum in Schleswig, Germany, to which the Viking Museum Haithabu belongs. He received his PhD at Marburg University (Germany) in 2001 on the Migration Period in the Masurian Lakeland, Poland. Since then he has been responsible for the field research in Haithabu which consists of geophysical surveying, metal-detecting and excavations and has received teaching appointments at the universities of Kiel (D), Aarhus (DK) and Brno (CZ). His research interests are focused on the archaeology and numismatics of the early Middle Age and the Viking period in Europe, especially in the Northern Sea Area and the Baltic with a focus on urbanization, trade and craft production.
Museum Advisor: Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County
Dr. Maureen Kelly Jonason has served as Executive Director of the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County since 2008. Prior to that, she taught college writing and humanities for twenty years, completing her teaching career at Concordia College. Her PhD is in Higher Education: Teaching and Learning.
Assessment Advisor
Dr. Vanessa Preast is the Associate Director of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment at Grinnell College. She received her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from University of Florida in 2000 and her PhD in Education (Curriculum and Instructional Technology) from Iowa State University in 2012. Dr. Preast has experience with digital accessibility and instructional design within online environments. Her scholarly and practical interests relate to the teaching, learning, and assessment practices which help higher education institutions create educational environments for optimal student success.
User Experience and Content Advisor
Dr. Lynn Ramey is professor of French and faculty director of the Center for Digital Humanities at Vanderbilt University. As co-director of the Global Middle Ages Project, she is in charge of the digital portal. Ramey is the author of An Introduction to Jean Bodel (forthcoming), Black Legacies: Race and the European Middle Ages (2014), and Christian, Saracen and Genre in Medieval French Literature (2001), and is currently working on recreations of medieval language, literature, and culture in video games.
STUDENT RESEARCHERS
Subject Matter Research
- Jack Ochoa-Andersen (Carleton College)
- Eva Mazzola (Carleton College)
- Shreya Mehta (Carleton College)
- Ella Parke (Carleton College)
- Parker Johnson (Carleton College)
- Tim Abbott (Carleton College)
- Ashton Macklin (Carleton College)
- Hali’a Buchal (Carleton College)
- Calla James Ruff (Carleton College)
- Marina Deutsch (Carleton College)
- Niles Bond (Grinnell College)
- Regann Fishell (Grinnell College)
Unity Software Development
- Lily Haas (Carleton College)
- Kritika Pandit (Carleton College)
- Sophie Quinn (Carleton College)
- Cynthia Lu (Carleton College)
- Oliver Black-Johnston (Carleton College)
- Isaac Lund (Carleton College)
- Kattie Meraz (Carleton College)
- Oscar Scherer (Grinnell College) – LinkedIn and GitHub.
- Moiz Yousufi (Grinnell College) – LinkedIn and GitHub.
3D Art
- Maddie Smith (Carleton College)
- Jane Parson (Carleton College)
- Will Shrestha (Carleton College)
- Hali’a Buchal (Carleton College)
- Calla James Ruff (Carleton College)
- Cynthia Lu (Carleton College)
- Regann Fishell (Grinnell College)
- Paden Houck (Grinnell College) – itch.io.
- Henry Loomis (Grinnell College)
Design Document
- Megan Bernacchi (Grinnell College)
- Pyait Myat (Grinnell College)
- Brian Sung (Grinnell College)
- Zitan Wang (Grinnell College)
Prototype Testing
- Ian Brown (Grinnell College)
- Haobo Chen (Grinnell College)
- Joshua Sutton (Grinnell College)
- Wayne (Kelton) Watts (Grinnell College)
- Ethan Yuen (Grinnell College)
Assessment Strategy
- Raj Jhanwar (Grinnell College)
- Shreyas Agrawal (Grinnell College)
- Nandika Jhunjhunwala (Grinnell College)
- Riku Smriga (Grinnell College)
- Keiichiro Watanabe (Grinnell College)