Niamh Clarke is a Digital Research Specialist in the Digital Humanities Core Facility (DHCF) for Textual Recovery Projects. She graduated from UH in 2024 with a degree in English and a distinguished minor in history.
After graduating, Clarke joined the core. She provides diligent management to projects she oversees and communicates the happenings of the core to the UH campus with DH’s newsletter “Bits, Bytes, and Scripts.” As an undergraduate, Clarke worked with David Mazella, associate professor of English, as a student and research assistant on the 1771 Project, noting it taught her perspective.
“His classes push you to think in ways that you haven’t considered. His job is not to make you a perfect writer but to advance your abilities beyond where they were at the beginning of the class.”
Clarke’s thinking grew to new heights and worked on Mazella’s literary history-based project, Project 1771. As a REACH Scholar, she was hands-on engaging with 18th-century literature and data cleaning. Clarke learned to fully immerse herself and consider multiple perspectives, specifically how those perspectives influence the ways primary texts are analyzed and presented to audiences.
Clarke applies what she learned as an RA to her work at the DHCF. She leads software tutorials, keeps the 1771 Project on top of their deadlines, and supports Howar Mena and Gabriela Baeza Ventura as a project manager.
She also has been curating student spotlights of her colleagues. Clarke sees these interviews as textual recovery. “I’m recovering students’ stories before they become necessary, before they become famous. I’m getting autographs and publishing them because at the core, we believe everyone is going to be famous one day.”
Clarke reflected on what it’s like to be the one interviewed. She’s done teacher spotlights and was the opinion editor of her high school’s newspaper, The Elsie Howler. When it was her turn as the interviewee, she said, “When you’re constantly trying to understand what an audience wants to learn from someone and what kind of questions an average person might ask, it’s easy to forget your own perspective.”
Clarke noticed her position evolved with multiple teaching opportunities. She was originally hired as temporary staff to work on the newsletter before developing teaching material for ClioVis software trainings. “I had no idea what I wanted to do with my degree, except that I enjoyed teaching and felt that there was somewhere I could make a positive impact.” She says.
What’s next is a Master of Arts in English at the University of Virginia. There Clarke will be creating her own digital humanities project on 19th-century Irish Gothic fiction and monster theory. Clarke is fascinated with monster theory thanks to Jeffery Cohen’s writings. “I would be interested in producing a project that analyzes the word choices and depictions of Gothic monsters or figures of monstrosity and comparing the similarities and differences between those creations from Irish Catholic and Protestant authors.”
Her research interests will tie into her thesis—exploring elements represented in fiction such as creativity, psychological, physical, and social dimensions while adding chimera-style visualizations to demonstrate the differences. Looking ahead, Clarke is planning a career as an academic professor while also considering research administration as a possibility in the future.