2026-2027 Praxis Program Charter

Introduction (Side A)

This is the 2026–2027 Praxis cohort at the Scholars’ Lab from University of Virginia. We are Catherine Fan, Sena Kaplan, Ruth Kramer, Kaarin Percy, and Slenka Botello.¹ We’re recording our Praxis Charter on a cassette tape. You’re probably wondering why a group spending a year learning digital humanities would choose to start in such an old-school, analog fashion, so we want to start by explaining why.

This year, we are learning digital humanities together: the theories, the methods, and the tools within the DH box. Most of that work happens through our laptop screens, writing in shared documents, coding in VS Code terminals, pushing our work into GitHub repositories, sharing resources in Slack threads and Zotero library. Digital work seems to be easy to edit, copy, revise and delete. That flexibility is useful, but it also lets us forget that every format shapes what it carries.

A cassette works differently. It runs in one direction, with a fixed length. Once we press record, we can’t quietly delete a sentence the way we would in a text file. We can only rewind the tape and record over it. So for us, passing this tape from one person to the next is our first piece of collective work as a cohort, spoken in our own voices.

This tape is both a record and a reminder. It reminds us that digital work rests on physical things: electronic devices, hard drives, cables, and people. And it reminds us that learning together takes time and patience, and that the process of learning, like the process of recording this tape, matters more than any finished project.

What follows is our statement: what we hope to build, what we need from one another, what we value, and how we plan to work together.

Goals

Our perspective towards Praxis is that it’s a space to pursue both collective and individual goals. We share the belief that Praxis is a space for the unique contributions of all cohort members, coming from our expertise and backgrounds in Art and Archeological History, History and Sociology. Our goal is to develop a shared practice of collaboration, learning, meaningful interdisciplinary connections and contributing to public scholarship.

Learning and Growing

Both our individual and group goals underline the importance of learning and growing as one of the foundational parts of our Praxis experience. The main learning goal we all share is having a deeper understanding of the general landscape of the digital humanities toolbox. While we have individual goals like learning GIS, developing tangible digital analysis skills, being able to create digital archives, web scraping; sharing these goals with the group informed one another and widened our perspectives and expectations. We aspire to learn about the current state and global scope of digital humanities scholarship and communities.

Meaningful Interdisciplinary Connections

We recognize that pursuing a PhD in humanities and social sciences is often a solitary and isolated experience. This isolation is twofold: the disconnect between the disciplines and the often lonely experience of PhD students. However, we are here not only as scholars but also as whole people. With Praxis, we aspire to build long lasting and meaningful interdisciplinary connections among ourselves and with DH communities outside of UVA. We believe participating in DH conferences, being part of DH networks and working with Scholars’ Lab staff will give us the chance to develop interdisciplinary collaborations.

Combining Individual and Group Goals

The collaborative aspect of our practice throughout this fellowship makes combining individual and group goals possible. This space gives us the chance to analyze our individual work with the help of others and develop them further with suggestions. Our purpose is being proficient in a variety of digital skills and we believe this is possible through support and collaboration within the group, as well as working together on our shared goals. To achieve our individual and group goals, we aim at using digital tools, like Obsidian and Trello, with help of each other and by learning together.

Facing the Public

We recognize the privileges and responsibilities that come with being in academia and pursuing scholarly activity. We understand that academic research and knowledge production never occur in a vacuum, and that we should constantly think and work on making knowledge accessible. Digital methods are great tools for this. Praxis will give us fabulous skills to make the academic knowledge seen, learned, and hopefully used by a greater public. One of our main purposes is to enable dialogue and exchange between academic and public communities, including global and local ones.

Needs

While we work together in a team and as a cohort in Praxis, each of us have individual needs and responsibilities that we will work to observe, respect, and support over the course of the year. The group needs listed here are reflective of what we need as individuals and as a team to grow, feel affirmed in Praxis, and to succeed professionally and personally.

Clear expectations

Setting clear expectations of one another and of the work we set out to do. This mirrors our value of transparency and effort.

Affirmation

Affirming one another professionally as scholars and personally as friends allows us to understand and appreciate the value behind our work. It is often easy to get swept up in one’s own criticism of the self and of one’s own work. As a group we need affirmation to continue to work with confidence and purpose alongside one another.

Constructive Criticism

On the other side of affirmation lies constructive criticism. The cohort’s need for constructive criticism allows for each of us to engage on what is working or not working within our projects. The need for constructive criticism vocalizes our desire to do good and useful work that is approachable and understandable to others. While constructive criticism is a key component of the growth and improvement of our work, this need must also be met with our values of transparency, grace, and safe existence.

Doing Too Much, or Not Overextending

Each member of the group brings their own skills and abilities to the cohort. It is the nature of academia to sometimes overextend oneself to appease the academy. Our group needs to know when we’re doing too much. This will function as a way to prioritize collaboration without overextension or a lack of rest.

Communicating Clearly and Early

The group’s need for clear and early communication is a way to set and manage expectations, respect time and work styles, and prevent overcommitment to different aspects of Praxis group work. We need early and effective communication in order to maintain a trusting and safe environment and to hold each other accountable to our commitments in Praxis while still managing expectations and responsibilities in our home departments and our personal lives.

Respect for Work Schedules and Work Styles

Our final need as a group is respect for our work schedules and work styles. Each person does work differently and on a different time frame, and we acknowledge this and respect everyone’s different approach to work. This need allows each of us to protect the time we give ourselves to be people outside of Praxis and outside of academia more generally. We each need time to ourselves and with our communities. Additionally, we ask for respect for each of our work styles, and for trust and accountability in our work with the Praxis cohort.

Values

To determine our group values, we each shared the values most important to us individually before combining them. This form of people-centered collaboration is the core of our value system.

Effort

Our focus is showing up for each other and the work that we do, not on the results we yield. No one among us expects perfection, but we all expect a certain degree of dedication that reflects our best efforts.

Honesty and Grace

We employ understanding and grace to promote honesty among the group. Each member should feel confident that they are able to communicate discomforts in an open space where judgement is not welcome. Vocalized discomforts and struggles will be met first with support before potential resolutions are proposed.

Transparency

We strive to maintain a level of transparency with one another to ensure that our work and values are maintained in a balanced manner. When conflicts arise, we expect members to communicate with the group as quickly as possible to allow other members of the cohort to properly support the people and work affected.

Collaboration

We will promote a supportive and collaborative approach to best learn from each other and staff. We each bring a different set of skills to the table, and only through collaboration can we each take full advantage of those specialized assets. We will value each individual as well as their skills and interests and, as a result, we will strengthen the group dynamic.

Responsibility and Accountability

In our respective departments, responsibility to oneself is prioritized above all. While we do acknowledge and cherish the importance of our own individual graduate work, we will strive to transcend that individually-focused attitude and come together as a cohesive unit. Everyone will be accountable to ourselves, the group, and the work we do. In that spirit, we will also hold each other accountable when necessary.

Safe Existence

The professional environment is often hostile to individuality, diversity, unconventional creativity, and sharing oneself. We will cultivate a space that is truly safe for existing freely as we are; to be able to be us. We all come from different backgrounds and possess different lore. This is an opportunity to share our experiences, ideas, and knowledge in ways that celebrate individuality and are usually discouraged in other professional settings. This sense of safety will promote approachability to both people and projects in our Praxis environment.

Practices

The practices listed here aim to summarize different actions we as a group and individuals decided to commit in order to accomplish our goals in dialogue with our needs and values. Practices are an everyday element of our work in Praxis and the hands-on intrinsic in it.

Experimentation:
We aim for experimentation-based practices rooted in collaboration, reciprocity, care, flexibility, grace, and kindness. We want to have fun and be curious while developing DH practices that integrate our individual expectations, work styles, and learning profiles.

Workflows:
We will work in Praxis with transparency and accountability, looking to maintain collective workflows that adjust to everyone’s time and possibilities.

Communication:
We will communicate to each other in friendly and clear language, promoting vernacular language over academic structured and rigid formats.

Our communication workflow includes chatting on Whatsapp, project management on Slack-Kanban for distributing and communicating assignments, and Google docs for collaborative writing.

Social practices:
We will organize after class cohort events (such as coffee chats, lunch, potluck, and co-working sessions) to create more fun and working times.

Conflict resolution:
We address conflict as it arises, working together to find solutions. Our principle is that everyone acts with good intentions, but conflict can arise from miscommunication, misunderstandings, and other life events. We search for resolutions based on our values of clear communication, understanding of other’s perspectives, and being open to constructive criticism.

Individual Statements (Side B):

Catherine

• I want to develop a working understanding of the broader digital humanities toolbox. I won’t be able to master every tool we encounter, but I want to understand what different methods can do, what kinds of questions they make possible, and which ones I may want to return to in future research.
• I want to build a stronger DH mindset by becoming more comfortable with coding, web design, GitHub, project design, and other ways of organizing and thinking about research that are different from my previous humanities practices.
• I plan to develop some concrete methodological skills for my dissertation project alongside this broader exploration: particularly GIS and spatial analysis in Fall 2026 for studying architectural sites, caves, and regional relationships, and digital text analysis in Spring 2027 for working with manuscript and textual case studies.
• I want to think carefully about the relationship between method and research question. I want to keep asking what it allows me to see, compare, organize, and question differently.
• I like to understand the larger structure of a problem and how its different pieces relate to one another. In praxis team projects, I hope to contribute by helping organize complicated information, workflows, and possibilities into structures that make the project easier to understand and move forward.
• At the same time, I want to become more comfortable with experimenting and playing around with easy minds. I often prefer to understand the context and logic of something before acting, so Praxis can be a space for me to try unfamiliar methods, share unfinished ideas, fail productively, and learn through making rather than waiting until I feel fully prepared.
• I value different ways of thinking and working. I want to pay attention to what individual members of the cohort are good at, interested in, and comfortable doing. I hope this can help us build visionary and fun projects around our complementary strengths.
• I also want to practice sharing my thoughts earlier. Because I tend to process ideas independently and internally before presenting them, I want to use Praxis as an opportunity to bring partially formed questions and problems to the group and allow collaboration to shape them before I have already settled on a solution.
• I also want to become more comfortable sharing my work publicly. As much as possible, I will try to publish the blog posts I write on the public website, using this as a way to build the confidence and courage to let a wider audience engage with work that may still feel unfinished.

Sena:

Goals:

1. Stay curious about and connected with work
2. Build long lasting connections with cohort and Scholars’ Lab
3. Have fun

Needs:

1. Direct communication with the cohort and staff
2. Support and patience
3. Respectful and horizontal relationships

Ruth:

Goals:

1. I will learn basic coding techniques and web design skills.
2. I will develop a DH project related to my research and that other scholars might be able to utilize or contribute to.
3. I will create a personal DH project that exists outside of my professional life and provides me with a creative outlet.
4. I will experiment and fail and try to have fun doing it.
5. I will make connections outside of my department and area of study that empower me as a scholar and as a person.

Needs:

1. I struggle with hyperindependence and control, which can sometimes lead to resisting assistance or help, so in this environment I ask for clear communication about when I am overstepping and reassurance that help is freely given and expected in this environment, not a burden or chore.
2. To maintain confidence and a steady workflow, I ask for affirmation in the work that I do.
3. I am not always mindful of my own limits in terms of time and work agreed to, and I ask that my cohort be mindful of these limits alongside me.
4. I ask for space when frustrated or confused so I can achieve a clear and level-head to continue.
5. I ask for understanding and open-mindedness from my peers, especially in unforeseen circumstances.

Values:

1. I affirm and advocate for my colleagues and community.
2. I believe in kindness and care above all.
3. I will not aim to win, I will aim to learn.
4. I show dedication in my work by prioritizing effort, clarity, and honesty.
5. I will remember that myself and my colleagues are not just scholars, but community members and people first.

Practices:

1. I will be open and honest in all elements of work and communication.
2. I will lead with kindness and openness.
3. I will hold myself accountable to my own deadlines and to the needs of the group.
4. I will prioritize the work of the group as well as my own research and personal time.
5. I will care for my colleagues and be a source of support in all ways possible.

Percy

Personal Goals:

1. Learn the skills necessary to create a database for cataloging pottery
2. Acquiring proficiency in coding required for basic but useful applications.
3. Learn how to build and design a website.
4. To form long lasting and meaningful connections through interdisciplinary collaboration.
5. Work on sharing professional burdens to even out and divide difficult tasks.
6. Create something meaningful.

Personal Needs

1. I do better when there are clear expectations set before me.
2. I ask for an open-minded understanding of other obligations and personal disasters or struggles.
3. I am a relatively big picture person and might need some assistance with details.
4. I thrive in an environment that promotes verbal affirmation and open but constructive criticism.
5. Often, I take a project and run with it. It is sometimes necessary to tell me when I am doing too much or being too much.

Personal Values

1. Dedication to each other and the task at hand.
2. Effort
3. Promoting justice for myself and my colleagues.
4. Kindness (which is free)
5. Care for the projects, but mostly for the people involved.

Personal Practices

1. I will always be transparent with the group about anything relevant to our time together.
2. I will strive to maintain a fair balance of work among the group by being self-aware of my own contributions and abilities.
3. I will hold myself accountable to the group and the values we set forward together.
4. I will keep things light-hearted to the best of my ability, to decrease stress and the weight of professional burdens.
5. I will practice restraint in situations where I am at risk of overreaching or over stepping.
6. I also will make an active effort to be known by my colleagues and to know them well enough to ensure a smooth experience and workflow for the group.

Slenka

Goals:

• To learn DH tools, pedagogical insights and both academic and professional strategies from and with my pairs and experts of the Scholar’s Lab.
• To test out new DH methods for dissertation purposes, and to share and discuss my finds and processes with pairs and experts.
• To cultivate better practices of systematization of the information I gather and I produce both online and in my own records.
• To learn and practice project management skill that complements and support my own search and learning processes.

Needs:

• I expect to be heard and recognized from both my academic and personal insights and thoughts.
• I want people to know that I acknowledge that my ways to learn and understand social life and academy are different from the U.S. standards. I am proud of that part of myself.
• Particularly in the fall semester I need time to work on my comps and prospectus writing. I ask for understanding on this regard, and I appreciated my pairs and Scholar’s Lab staff their willing to help me navigate this stressful era.

Values:

• I engage in relational horizontal learning processes where everyone’s experience is recognized and help build collective knowledge.
• I see Praxis as a creative laboratory to explore Digital tools from a critical thinking framework.
• I want to belong to an interdisciplinary academic community that supports each other and that respects and validates each one’s view of the world.

Practices:

• I am happy sharing thoughts, ideas, information, etc, about my own culture and from my background.
• I like to support and help others to learn or to disentangle problems when I see they need help.
• I will do my best to arrive on time to our sessions, but I already know I struggle with it and sometimes I will arrive a few minutes later after running through the city on my bike.
• I will be open to hang out with my cohort for academic or friendship purposes at any available time I can have.

Thanks TO ALL :)