Libraries Presents Graduate Research Series Fall 2021

The Graduate Research Series (GRS) is once again virtual this year, and two graduate students from Ohio University will share their research processes in online presentations Nov. 15 at 3:30 and Nov. 18 at 10 a.m. The series, which is held each semester, provides an opportunity for students to talk about their research and help illuminate research for other students. The events will take place on Microsoft Teams. 

The two students who will be presenting for the fall semester’s GRS are Ritika Popli, a doctoral candidate of Rhetoric and Culture, and Brian Koscho, a third year MFA student in communications. Join Popli’s Nov. 15 talk here on Microsoft Teams, and join Koscho’s Nov. 18 talk here. 

Each year, the Graduate Research Series is supported by University Libraries, Graduate Student Senate and Faculty Senate. The presenters are selected by the GRS committee, which is made up of representatives from the Libraries and Graduate Student Senate. 

On Nov. 15, Ritika Popli will give her talk about her dissertation research, titled, “The Digital Afterlives of India’s Partition: Memories and Border,” which explores digital history archives that hold personal accounts of Partition in British India. 

Popli described Partition as the “moment of decolonization,” when the British left the Indian subcontinent in 1947. When Britain withdrew from the region, India was divided into the states of India and Pakistan, and Pakistan was then further divided into East and West Pakistan (which is Bangladesh today). 

“About one million people died and about 20 million people were displaced. My own grandparents, actually, were displaced during Partition,” Popli said. “So along with the research, I’m also very personally invested in the subject.” 

She noted that several digital archives dedicated to preserving histories about Partition have emerged in the last decade, with products ranging from virtual reality simulations to oral histories. Her research, which she will discuss in the GRS talk, then asks how these digital archives retell and remake the event of Partition in the digital space.

“I think archivists and people interested in the creation of archives will be interested in this,” Popli said, “as well as, just at large, people who are interested in any kind of history, identity formation, digital media or digital public memory.”

Join Ritika Popli’s talk on Nov. 15 at 3:30 p.m. 

Brian Koscho’s Graduate Research Series presentation, titled, “Invisible Ground: Making the Stories of Community History Visible,” also blends technology and history. His talk on Nov. 18 will focus on his master’s thesis, through which he is bringing local Athens history to life through audio storytelling on his podcast (called “Invisible Ground”), historic photos and augmented reality. 

Much of Koscho’s focus at the moment is on the Berry Hotel, which stood on Court Street for 82 years until it was torn down in 1974. Today, the old Court Street Diner sits where the hotel once stood, and Koscho plans to use augmented reality technology to allow people to see what it looked like when the hotel was in business. 

“I am working on creating these augmented reality historic markers, so essentially, historic markers that will allow you to see a historic photo overlayed in the present location using your phone’s camera,” he said. “And then I’m using that as a tool for historical storytelling. In addition, I have also been working to accompany that with audio pieces, short audio stories, that will further give meaning to the location.”

The research has combined Koscho’s interests in local history and multimedia. He hopes to highlight local history in new ways to reach a wider audience and has utilized a lot of information from the University Libraries’ archives, especially the W.E. Peters Papers, to do so. 

“Now, the two years I’ve been in school, and as I’ve worked toward these podcasts and this idea, I’ve used the [Libraries’] digital archives extensively,” he said. “There's all of this local historical importance in the Libraries’ archives.”

Koscho said that those who are interested in history, especially local history, those studying media, members of the Athens community, those interested in augmented reality or technology, and a broad swath of others may be interested in his GRS presentation. Join his talk on Nov. 18 at 10 a.m.

For more information about the Graduate Research Series, contact Library Events Coordinator Jen Harvey.