William J Turkel

Associate Professor
PhD, MIT (2004)

Project Director, Digital Infrastructure for the SSHRC Strategic Knowledge Cluster
NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment

In my research and teaching I draw on, integrate and try to extend a number of different disciplines: environmental and public history, the histories of science and technology, 'big history', STS, computation, and studies of place and social memory.

Hacking and Humanistic Fabrication

In my new research program, I'm exploring ways to build historical interpretations into physical devices and environments. This work is backward looking, in the sense that it engages with the histories of measurement, materials science and machine tools. It is also very present-minded, since I am approaching the project as a form of critical technical practice, building on new developments in ubiquitous / pervasive computing and desktop fabrication. To support this work, I have put together a Lab for Humanistic Fabrication with an associated wiki. For more about the genesis of this project, see my blog posts "Hello World" and "A Few Arguments for Humanistic Fabrication" and my grant application for "Interactive, Ambient and Tangible Devices for Knowledge Mobilization." I also recently organized a workshop on Hacking as a Way of Knowing with Edward Jones-Imhotep.

Reconstructing the Past from Material Traces

In research for my first monograph, I examined the ways that people reconstruct the past of a place from its material traces. These people — geologists, archaeologists, foresters, and many other specialists — are typically in search of a usable history. When their interests clash, other stakeholders are motivated to provide different accounts of the past. A preliminary article from this project appeared in the June 2006 issue of the journal Rethinking History ("Every Place Is an Archive: Environmental History and the Interpretation of Physical Evidence," Vol 10, no. 2, 259-76.) My book The Archive of Place: Unearthing the Pasts of the Chilcotin Plateau was published by UBC Press in 2007 and the University of Washington in 2008. The Archive of Place won the 2008 Clio Award (British Columbia) from the Canadian Historical Association.

A chapter about this work also appears in a volume that I co-edited with Alan MacEachern, Method and Meaning in Canadian Environmental History (Toronto: Nelson, 2008). Method and Meaning is a collection of new essays that introduce the student of environmental history to the methodologies of a range of adjacent disciplines and to techniques for interpreting many different kinds of evidence.

Methodology for the Infinite Archive

From 2005 to 2008 I wrote a research weblog called Digital History Hacks. In my blog I discussed the kinds of techniques that are appropriate for an archive that has near-zero transaction costs, is constantly changing and effectively infinite. Digital History Hacks received the 2006 Cliopatria Award for Best New Blog. With Alan MacEachern and Adam Crymble, I am writing an open-access, open-source monograph on Python programming for historians and other humanists, called The Programming Historian. The book is freely available on the NiCHE website. I also participated in a forum on "The Promise of Digital History," published in the September 2008 issue of the Journal of American History (Vol. 95, no. 2, 442-51).

The convergence of handheld computing with locative technologies like the global positioning system (GPS) and geographic information systems (GIS) makes it possible to do archival work in the field. In the long run, this will change the way that we experience places and understand the past. Since 2001, I've been experimenting with place-based computing, as one way to unite digital and material archives.

I teach a two semester sequence of graduate courses on digital history that play a central role in our public history MA program. History 9808A emphasizes the presentation of history on the web, and the use of computational techniques to work with digital sources. History 9832B is a studio course on interactive exhibit design for public historians. Using the Arduino microcontroller and the Processing programming language, students work through a series of hands-on projects that teach the basics of interaction design, physical computing, and fabrication. The course draws on new work in social computing and open-source DIY/hacking culture. As far as I know, it is the only course of its kind offered in Canada. There is more information in a short essay that I wrote for the Western Alumni Gazette, "Histories of the Future" (Fall 2008, p18).

Selected Research Funding

with Alan MacEachern (principal investigator), Laura Cameron, Stephane Castonguay, Colin Coates, Matthew Evenden, Liza Piper, and Graeme Wynn. "NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment," SSHRC Strategic Knowledge Clusters Grant, 2007-14; SSHRC Research Clusters Interim Grant, 2006; SSHRC Research Clusters Design Grant, 2004.

"The Path to the Self-Replicating Machine," SSHRC Research Development Initiatives, 2009-11.

"Workshop on Application Programming Interfaces for the Digital Humanities," SSHRC Image, Text, Sound and Technology workshop grant, 2009-10.

"Interactive, Ambient and Tangible Devices for Knowledge Mobilization," SSHRC Image, Text, Sound and Technology, 2008-09.

"Place-Based Computing for Environmental and Public History," SSHRC Research Development Initiatives, 2005-07.

with Rob MacDougall (principal investigator) and Kevin Kee, "History at Play: Augmented Reality Gaming and the Ubiquitous Past," SSHRC Image, Text, Sound and Technology, 2009-10.

Notes for Students

Agre, Phil. "Networking on the Network: A Guide to Professional Skills for PhD Students" (14 Aug 2005).

Edwards, Paul N. "How to Read a Book: Strategies for Getting the Most out of Non-Fiction Reading" (2005).

Edwards, Paul N. "How to Give an Academic Talk: Changing the Culture of Public Speaking in the Humanities" (2004).

MacEachern, Alan. "Applying to Grad School (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)" (2007).

Turkel, William J. "How to Tell if You've Written a Good History Paper" (31 Jan 2005).

Turkel, William J. "Preparing for Comprehensive Exams" (23 Apr 2005).

Videocasts


"Public History and the Infinite Archive" (Apr 2009)	"Handheld Computing for Place-Based Learning" (May 2006)

Also from this web page:

Books

Twitter Feed

follow me on Twitter

Weblog 2005-08

Courses

HIS 9808A - Digital History. The web is the largest, most easily-accessible archive that people have ever created, and also the most radically unfamiliar.
HIS 9832B - Interactive Exhibit Design. A studio course that teaches interaction design, physical computing and fabrication for public historians.
HIS 1805E - Science, Technology and Global History. We do global history from the big bang to human extinction, with an emphasis on math, science, technology, medicine and environment.

Upcoming & Recent Activities

Workshop on Application Programming Interfaces for the Digital Humanities, Toronto ON (16-17 Oct 2009).
"Hacking as a Way of Knowing," Keynote address, Access 2009, Charlottetown PE (3 Oct 2009).
"Matter, the New Medium," Frontiers of New Media, Salt Lake City UT (18-19 Sep 2009).
Immersive Worlds, St Catharines ON (15-16 Jun 2009).
"Hacking History," GTA Science & Technology Studies Workshop, Toronto ON (8 May 2009).
Hacking as a Way of Knowing, Toronto ON (1-3 May 2009).