Projects & Research
The Center for Digital Humanities at the University of Arizona operates as a diversity-oriented innovation incubator where researchers and 24 student developers advance globally inclusive humanities knowledge-making through cutting-edge technologies — including volumetric video capture, 3D scanning, augmented and virtual reality, 360-degree videography, robotics, and holographic broadcasting. Since its founding, the CDH has secured over $4.3 million in external funding. Below are highlights from current and ongoing initiatives.
Virtual Harlem
Virtual Harlem is one of the earliest full virtual reality environments created for humanities scholarship. Originally launched in 1997, it is an immersive recreation of 1920s Harlem during the New Negro Renaissance, allowing users to walk the streets, enter jazz clubs, and experience the cultural energy of that transformative era. Over nearly three decades, the project has evolved through multiple platforms — from VRML to Second Life to Unity — and has expanded to include Virtual Montmartre, which recreates the African American expatriate experience in 1920s Paris.
Volumetric Video Capture & Holographic Broadcasting
The CDH operates one of the few volumetric capture stages in the American Southwest, housed in the University of Arizona's Main Library. This technology captures subjects in full three-dimensional spatial data, producing lifelike 3D holograms that can be recorded, broadcast live, or integrated into virtual and augmented reality experiences. Current volumetric projects include an NEH-funded collaboration recording oral narratives of BIPOC expatriates in Berlin, a Jewish Holocaust Museum project preserving survivor testimonies, a partnership with the Curaçao Jewish Museum, an LED hologram for Colorado's Tread Museum, and a Spencer Foundation study investigating the educational impact of live holographic instruction.
Digital Scanning & 3D Preservation
The CDH has developed a robust digital scanning and 3D preservation pipeline using photogrammetry, structured light scanning, LiDAR, and mobile tools like Scaniverse and RealityScan. Current projects include the HCAC–HBCU Scanning Initiative (traveling to Washington, D.C. and multiple HBCUs to scan archival artifacts), a $175,000 Knight Foundation Fellowship with The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia, digitization work with the Tucson Center for Black Life, and a multi-phase National Park Service project documenting historic enslaved quarters at Whitehill Plantation in Virginia. CDH students also lead mobile digital scanning workshops at international conferences.
Digital Storytelling & Immersive Narratives
Digital storytelling sits at the heart of the CDH's mission. By combining 360-degree video, augmented reality, virtual reality, and volumetric capture, the Center creates immersive narratives that bring history and culture to life. Current projects include Montreal digital storytelling using 360 video and 3D Vista, the Mount Graham/Kitt Peak 360 Tour documenting Arizona observatories, a Pima County Visitor Center interactive experience, and a buffel grass awareness project raising public awareness about invasive species in the Arizona desert.
Augmented Reality Experiences
The CDH has developed several augmented reality projects that layer digital content onto physical spaces. Discovering Community in the Borderlands, funded by IMLS and the Mellon Foundation, is a walking AR tour telling the stories of six cultural communities at ten sites across Tucson. Augmenting the Civil Rights Trail, in collaboration with Tuskegee University, uses AR to enhance significant locations along the 230-mile trail from Selma to Atlanta. The Anti-Racism Extended Reality Studio creates immersive VR and AR scenarios for anti-racist understanding. Through the Honors College, Dr. Carter has led study abroad experiences to Paris and Berlin implementing digital documentation using AR and holograms.
Connect Arizona Now (CAN)
Connect Arizona Now is a $3 million digital inclusion initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce. As Primary PI, Dr. Carter leads this effort to provide broadband access and digital literacy programming to five underserved communities in Southern Arizona, establishing community resource centers in Douglas, Thatcher, Yuma, and the Pascua Yaqui community.
Caribbean Digital Humanities Center
In collaboration with the Mongui Maduro Library in Curaçao, Dr. Carter is helping establish the Caribbean's first Digital Humanities Center. This initiative transforms the library into a dynamic hub for research, innovation, and capacity building, offering digital humanities workshops, supporting student exchange programs between the University of Arizona and Caribbean institutions, and empowering Caribbean scholars with emerging technologies.
THE VIRTUAL HARLEM PROJECT (VHp) is a collaborative learning network whose purpose is to study the Harlem Renaissance, an important period in African American literary history, through the construction of a virtual reality scenario that represents Harlem, New York, as it existed between the 1920-30s. Virtual Harlem is a learning environment in which students studying the Harlem Renaissance can experience the historical context of its literature.The project was originally conceived in 1998 by Bryan Carter at Central Missouri State University and the first prototype was initiated in collaboration with Bill Plummer at the Advanced Technology Center at the University of Missouri
In August of 1999, the University of Illinois at Chicago contributed to the VHp by translating the Harlem experience to a fully immersive environment- the CAVE. Since then Virtual Harlem has been an experimental testbed for a diverse group of educators and researchers
