Last August, we announced a new, pilot initiative for the Scholars’ Lab – the creation of a Praxis Program, which would offer hands-on training to six UVa graduate students in digital humanities project creation, taking them from conception to software and interface design and development, through to deployment, communications, and analysis. Praxis is a unique training program in the international digital humanities community. The most notable thing about it was our plan to involve students as a team – a cohort, who would intern with Scholars’ Lab faculty and staff, blog about their experiences, and work to develop the so-called “softer skills” of collaboration and project management even as they tackled (most for the first time) new programming languages, software tools, and digital methods.

The 2011-12 Praxis cohort is in full swing, and – thanks to the generosity of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the support of UVa Library’s Scholarly Communication Institute (SCI) – we are able to undertake a second pilot year of this innovative program, even while we work to explore the creation of an international Praxis Network, involving like-minded initatives that address the changing needs of humanities graduate students in the digital age. (The program itself and its SCI context are are the subject of two recent Inside UVa articles: Praxis Program Gives Future Scholars Crash Course in Digital Humanities Skills and Mellon Grant Extension Boosts Digital Humanities Graduate Training Program.)

Six new Praxis students will begin working with us in late August. Each will be awarded $8000 in fellowship funds to offset the commitment of time (generally about 10 hours per week, through May 2013) they will make to living, learning, and building a collaborative digital humanities project in the Scholars’ Lab.

All University of Virginia graduate students working in or committed to humanities disciplines are eligible to apply to join the 2012-13 cohort. We particularly encourage applications from women, LGBT students, and people of color, and will be working to put together an interdisciplinary and intellectually diverse team.

Luncheon Q&A, Wednesday, March 21st Please join Scholars’ Lab staff and current Praxis Fellows on Wednesday, March 21st for a Q&A session on the program, to be held in the Scholars’ Lab at 12:00 p.m. Lunch will be provided, so RSVP to Ronda Grizzle, Outreach & Training Specialist (rag9b at virginia dot edu) by noon on Monday, March 19. If you’re unable to join us for lunch but have questions about the program, don’t hesitate to be in touch with Eric Johnson, Head of Outreach & Public Services (ej9k at virginia dot edu).

Application deadline: Sunday, March 25th The application process is simple: direct an email to Eric Johnson at the address above. Please indicate why you’re interested in the Praxis Program, what you think you will gain from it, and what you feel you would bring to a collaborative digital humanities project. A small committee, consisting of Scholars’ Lab faculty and staff and members of the 2012-13 Praxis cohort, will evaluate expressions of interest and schedule group or individual interviews with finalists.