The Price Lab offers expert consultation and, when appropriate, project collaboration to Penn faculty, students, and staff for digital humanities projects. We are able to advise on tools, methods, and project planning and to help identify additional resources at Penn and beyond. If you are interested in working with the Price Lab, the first step is to reach out to the managing director, Stewart Varner, to schedule a consultation. Whether you have a fully formed project plan or just the beginnings of an idea, we’d love to hear from you.

WHO IS ELIGIBLE to seek Project Support from the Price Lab?
We can provide research support for faculty, staff, and students from the School of Arts & Sciences. Faculty from other schools at Penn are also encouraged to get in touch provided their project will involve some collaboration with faculty or students in SAS. Student applicants must name a faculty advisor or collaborator on the project, and include that faculty member's contact information as part of the application.

WHAT KINDS OF PROJECTS will the Price Lab support?

• We support research in any of the major strands of digital humanities, including:
• text mining, computational analysis, big data
• data curation/visualization
• online scholarly communication, digital publishing, & minimal computing
• critical making & physical computing
• public humanities, creative/critical approaches

We understand digital humanities to be a diffuse and constantly evolving set of practices with no clear boundaries, and we are prepared to consider all ideas on their merits and to provide feedback in every case. To see examples of projects we have supported in the past, visit the Projects At Price Lab page.

WHAT KINDS OF SUPPORT can the Price Lab provide?
Our team is available for consultations to assist with the following:

• Identify the people and resources at Penn best positioned to contribute to your research goals;
• Appoint a project manager and assemble a support team to ensure smooth progress of your research;
• Identify relevant digital humanities tools and resources on campus and beyond, as well as related working groups and projects already underway;
• Help you to formulate research questions appropriate to digital humanities scholarship;
• Advise you on the various options and best practices for documenting your work and for managing, storing, and disseminating the data produced by your research;
• Suggest possible funding sources and offer advice on how to write a successful grant proposal.

In some limited cases we can assist in the creation of web-based digital projects. Because these kinds of projects vary widely, it is impossible to create a detailed one-size-fits-all policy. In general, we are committed to the following principles:

• Use as little technology as possible;
• Customize as little as possible;
• Prioritize the clarity and sustainability of scholarly content;
• Empower collaborators to play an active role in project creation and maintenance;
• Take advantage of the web’s ability to lower the barriers to access when appropriate;
• Be mindful of the web’s potential to harm the vulnerable and avoid doing so.

All long-term projects will be required to create and agree to abide by a project charter that describes:

• Desired goals and outcomes;
• Roles and responsibilities for team members;
• Estimated timeline for development and launch;
• Long term hopes and dreams (including plans for sunsetting and/or archiving).

FUNDING
The Price Lab has a small budget to provide modest support for projects that need it. The kinds of expenses we typically cover include student research assistants, software licenses, server space, programming support, and costs associated with data gathering.  

NOTE: We do not generally purchase laptops, workstations, or other hardware for individual researchers. In some cases, we can cover conference travel associated with presenting work supported by the Price Lab.