Digital Community Engagement: Partnering Communities with the Academy

Edited with Rebecca Wingo and Paul Schadewald, our volume brings together cutting-edge campus-community partnerships with a focus on digital projects. Through a series of case studies authored by academics and their community partners, we explore models for digital community engagement that leverages new media through reciprocal partnerships. The contributions to the volume stand at the crossroads of digital humanities, public history, and community engagement, drawing ideas, methods, and practices from various disciplines to inform our public partnerships. By highlighting these projects we hope to provide other institutions, cultural heritage organizations, universities, and communities models for successful engagement.

Awards—

Winner of the 2021 National Council on Public History (NCPH) Book Award.

Reviews—

Ann-Marie Foster, Public History Review:

Taken together, this collection is a welcome addition to the field of community engagement and one which is designed to stimulate discussion. The editors encourage readers to see the volume as a prompt for further conversations and readers are encouraged to highlight, annotate and connect through it. This volume opens up a conversation about DiCE which is long overdue, with the digital format of the text suggesting it is one that will continue for some time to come.

Megan Smeznik, Reviews in Digital Humanities:

With its easy prose and critical lens, DiCE will be a welcome addition to public history courses and valuable to those wishing to create similar partnerships. 

Christopher D. Cantwell, The Public Historian:

But taken as a whole, the volume’s essays constitute a vital contribution to the field. If the newfound interest in virtual meetings and remote learning brought on by the pandemic are any indicators, our lives will only continue to become more mediated by digital technology. Wingo, Heppler, and Shadewald’s volume might have just provided us with a road map to navigate these times.