Hi. I’m Lisa Kelly, a 4th year in the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama program.  My research focuses on how nineteenth-century British actresses engaged in reputation management and the rise of celebrity culture through participation in philanthropy, advertisement, and autobiographical presentation of self.  This means that I spend a lot of time pouring over digitized 19th century periodicals and creating networks among people and events.  I am also a “recovering” technology luddite.  I often feel like I am the last to embrace technology in an academic setting, I used powerpoint in a conference presentation for the first time in 2010, and only bought a connector to set my laptop up to the smart equipment in NU classrooms this past spring quarter after my students insisted on seeing videos to accompany our discussion of film and television.

But I did get the connector and I now feel pretty comfortable showing videos at least.  Scared as I was to use technology that could potentially fail at conferences and in the classroom, however, my dissertation project would not be possible without the ability to search huge databases of periodicals and the archives of many companies that are far away from Chicago.  So, for now, at least, I fall on the side of using digital humanities to enhance a traditional project.  This year I want to learn more about the scope of the digital humanities and how I can use tools to enhance my research and also to broaden my students’ experience in the classroom.