Student Research Partnership in Digital Humanities – The Virtual Longship Project

31 October 2024
By Shreya Mehta '27

This past summer I joined the Virtual Viking Longship Project, which is a collaborative initiative between Carleton College and Grinnell College, overseen by Austin Mason, David Neville, and Tim Arner. The project mainly focuses on creating an immersive virtual reality experience that can allow users to interact with a historical replica of a Viking Longship along with various other artifacts amongst the ship. 

My role as a subject matter expert consisted of researching and creating annotations for various components of the longship. This process required me to jump head first into historical records and larger pieces of literature within the era of the Viking world. My first few weeks of the project were spent acclimating and learning more about Viking history before using the summer to focus on creating annotations and organizing past annotations into a tangible and accessible way for users to understand the significance and usage of certain parts of a typical Viking Longship. I also began to acquire more experience in reading cultural texts including different Sagas in order to gain a better cultural understanding of materials, events and voyages certain parts of the Longship were crucial for. A final goal for the project is to take all of this information and create interactive pop-ups which will allow for an informative exhibit to supplement digital artifacts, and a minigame. 

Having little to no background experience in research, I had to quickly learn how to look at historical texts through a technological lens. Within this lens were new platforms such as GitHub which allowed for interdisciplinary communication between me and my colleagues, who worked on more of the digital aspects of the project. Having absolutely no experience with computer science research, this was particularly difficult, but allowed for a unique opportunity to gain experience in organizing and cataloging digital information. I also had the opportunity to see the work I did come to life through Virtual Reality which made for an extremely rewarding experience. 

This summer research experience was not only a deep learning experience as a first-time research assistant, but also was a valuable testament to how virtual reality and other technological advancements can create tools that put forth new enriching experiences. Using new mediums and platforms available, I am absolutely confident in my ability to take advantage of the opportunities this gives me to create new historical learning experiences. I am so excited to be a part of a world where history and technology are intertwined together to make for a more hands-on learning experience.