Digital Scholarship
Ed has worked in digital history since the field’s inception in the early 1990s. New American History, for which he serves as Executive Director, integrates digital history—in words, images, maps, audio, and video—to reveal the place of history in our lives. Weaving together Bunk, American Panorama, BackStory, and The Future of America’s Past, the project also offers extensive teaching resources for teachers and students.
Bunk
Each day, our staff combs the internet for interesting articles, maps, videos, conversations, visualizations, and podcasts about the American past. We tag each of these for the who/what/where/when of the stories they tell, enabling them to be mixed and matched with the thousands of other stories in our archive. By highlighting some of the many points of connection between these overlapping stories and interpretations, we hope to create a fuller and more honest portrayal of our shared past, and reveal the extent to which every representation is part of a longer conversation.
Richmond Magazine: “Bunkhistory.org is another innovative experiment with history pioneered by Ayers. The site defines itself as “a shared home for the Web’s most interesting writing and thinking about the American past’.”
Civil War Memory: “History educators will certainly find this resource to be helpful in trying to make those connections between current events and the past more tangible for their students.”
Nieman Lab, Harvard University: “Content is presented in a mosaic format on the home page, featured in “Collections” on specific themes (“Monument Wars,” “Immigrants Not Welcome”...), and searchable by theme (Money, Power, Family…). The aggregated content includes a few paragraphs on Bunk’s site, then you click through to the publisher’s original site to finish. One big part of the vision is to highlight connections between disparate pieces of media.”
New American History
History is the turbulent, unpredictable, and deeply human record of everything that happened before this moment. Through interactive maps, video, audio, an algorithmic engine of journalism, and tools for educators, we hope to make visible what was previously invisible about our shared American story.
American Association of School Librarians: Awarded one of the Best Digital Tools for Teaching and Learning, “These user-friendly tools are recognized for fostering the qualities of innovation/creativity, active participation, collaboration, exploration, and information/reference.”
Cult of Pedagogy: “With a goal of uncovering the “untold stories and missing pieces of what we know or thought we already knew about the American past,” this site explores these histories through a fascinating combination of curated journalism, resources for teachers and students, and incredible data-rich interactive maps.”
Bring History and Civics to Life: “...New American History can be helpful for secondary students in understanding broader chronological concepts with learning resources, podcasts, and connections to Bunk built into the timeline.”
Click here to explore New American History’s projects and partnerships →
The Digital Scholarship Lab
The Digital Scholarship Lab develops innovative digital humanities projects that contribute to research and teaching at and beyond the University of Richmond. It seeks to reach a wide audience by developing projects that integrate thoughtful interpretation in the humanities and social sciences with innovations in new media. Ed founded the Lab in 2007 and continues his collaboration there as Senior Research Fellow.
NPR: "Interactive redlining map zooms in on America's history of discrimination."
New York Times: "...a stunning data visualization project."
MarketWatch: "...the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab created this detailed reminder of America’s colorful history as a nation of immigrants.”
Click here to explore the work of the Digital Scholarship Lab →
Southern Journey StoryMap
For the remarkable StoryMap that accompanies the book, Justin Madron and Nathaniel Ayers of the Digital Scholarship Lab won the prestigious International Cartographic Association and the International Map Industry Association Excellence in Cartography Award for 2021. “Using a myriad of mapping methods, this StoryMap of Southern Journey delivers a riveting narrative of the interwoven complex causes of the ebbs and flows that have shaped the southeastern United States. The dominant eye-catching topaz-and-turquoise honeycomb maps are highly effective in intentionally addressing the ambiguity of inconsistent geographic areas over time. A commanding control of various StoryMap capabilities shapes this chronicle with engaging interactive maps and animations.”
American Panorama
American Panorama is an historical atlas of the United States for the twenty-first century. It combines cutting-edge research with innovative interactive mapping techniques, designed to appeal to anyone with an interest in American history or a love of maps.
Chronicle of Higher Education: "American Panorama uses digital tools to remap history."
Wired: “…these maps have depth. Adding layers of technology and interactivity to an otherwise daunting trove of data helps us make connections we might otherwise miss... You’re looking at history with a very powerful magnifying glass in hand—and that’s a very cool thing.”
The Valley of the Shadow:
Two Communities in the Civil War
The Valley Project details life in two American communities, one Northern and one Southern, from the time of John Brown's Raid through the era of Reconstruction. In this digital archive you may explore thousands of original letters and diaries, newspapers and speeches, census and church records, left by men and women in Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Giving voice to hundreds of individual people, the Valley Project tells forgotten stories of life during the era of the Civil War.
Metropole: “Using enhanced search features and improving accessibility and readability, its creators aim to engage a new generation of learners with an updated version 2.0 of The Valley of the Shadow. It is clear that learning how to think about history and investigate it independently continue to be overarching goals of The Valley project.”
The National Endowment for the Humanities has provided generous funding to the Valley of the Shadow. Click here to learn about NEH support for the project and how the Valley fits into Ed’s broader work.
Selected articles and essays in Digital History
Office Hours with John Gardner: Engaging American History, 2023
Georgetown University, The Big Think Interview, 2020
"Future Lab: An Applied Experiment in Digital Scholarship," artselectronic, September 9, 2014
"The Future of Scholarship," adapted from remarks offered on the acceptance of the Boyer Award at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, Spring 2014
"A More-Radical Online Revolution," Chronicle of Higher Education, February 4, 2014
"Does Digital Scholarship Have a Future?" EDUCAUSE Review, August 5, 2013
Keynote Address at the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education Summit, 2012
"Lincoln's America 2.0," Journal of American History, September 2009
"Doing Scholarship on the Web: 10 Years of Triumphs and a Disappointment," Chronicle of Higher Education, January 30, 2004
"The Pasts and Futures of Digital History," Virginia Center for Digital History, 1999
Selected press on Ed's Digital Scholarship
“History’s Next Step,” University of Richmond Alumni Magazine, January 10, 2020
"American Panorama Project named as one of the Chronicle of Higher Education's nine tech innovators for 2016," University of Richmond, April 11, 2016
"Guidelines for the Professional Evaluation of Digital Scholarship by Historians," American Historical Association, June 2015