POST: Launching the Boston Research Center

Dan Cohen (Northeastern University) has just published a blog post about Northeastern University’s new grant from the Mellon Foundation to establish a Boston Research Center (BRC). Cohen writes that

The BRC will seek to unify major archival collections related to Boston, hundreds of data sets about the city, digital modes of scholarship, and a wide array of researchers and visualization specialists to offer a seamless environment for studying and displaying Boston’s history and culture…

We will all be working together, and with many others from beyond the university, to imagine and develop large-scale projects that examine major trends and elements of Boston, such as immigration, neighborhood transformations, economic growth, and environmental changes. There will also be an opportunity for smaller-scale stories to be documented, and of course the BRC itself will be open to anyone who would like to research the city or specific communities.

Cohen’s post highlights the role that digital humanities can play in locally-based research, pedagogy, and activism.