When: Friday, October 3, 3:00 PM
Where: Tyler 055

Abstract:
Medievalists are scholars, within the larger discipline of the humanities, who specialize in studying various aspects of the Middle Ages, which roughly took place from the year 500 to 1500 C.E., though it varies from culture to culture. In this work, we use a human-computer interaction lens to understand how medievalists currently use computing technologies, what unique needs they have, and how HCI can better design them. To this end, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 medievalists from universities in the US and whose work spans diverse subspecialities. We found that existing computing technologies present several challenges to the research needs of medievalist scholars. Based on these findings, I will discuss four major research opportunities that, we believe, will help these technologies better meet the needs of this underserved community. What is more, the unique requirements of medieval research provide interesting challenges for HCI and computer science researchers.

Bio:
Tina-Marie Ranalli holds a research faculty affiliation with the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures at URI. She earned her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in French Studies. Her research focuses on marginalized communities across two fields – the humanities and human-computer interaction. More specifically, she focuses on accessibility and user-centered design along with french and comparative medieval literature and manuscripts studies. She has been working with the ASSET lab in the Department of Computer Science and Statistics for the past several years. She publishes extensively in HCI, design, and accessibility venues.