Epoiesen– made – is a journal for exploring creative engagement with the past, especially through digital means (online here). It publishes primarily what might be thought of as ‘paradata’ or artist’s statements that accompany playful and unfamiliar forms of singing the past into existence. These could be visualizations, art works, games, pop-up installations, poetry, hypertext fiction, procedurally generated works, or other forms yet to be devised. We seek to document and valorize the scholarly creativity that underpins our representations of the past. Epoiesen is therefore a kind of witness to the implied knowledge of archaeologists, historians, and other professionals, academics and artists as it intersects with the sources about the past. It encourages engagement with the past that reaches beyond our traditional audience (ourselves).

We’ve managed to publish 4 annual volumes so far. The project of this journal has been cited as innovative, timely, and necessary. We open up opportunities for scholar/practitioners at all levels, whether in Academia or not, to envision new ways of engaging with the past. Epoiesen provides a venue for the more creative and untraditional outputs produced through the Public History programme and Digital Humanities M.A.. It also provides an opportunity for graduate students to have their theses and major research essays published.

Funds raised will help to professionalize the journal, and create an opportunity for a PhD student or Postdoc to take on the role of Managing Editor. We want to be able to hire professional copy editor and to hire a web editor to polish our site, and increase its reach.

The training opportunities that this journal provides in the areas of public engagement, outreach, publishing, web technologies, digital rights management, data management, and archiving are hands-on, experiential learning activities that are otherwise hard to provide in the context of course work.

Many pieces of work that are submitted to us come from leading scholars all over the world, and can then be directly assigned as readings in a variety of classes–ranging from my own HIST3814 Crafting Digital History and HIST3812 topics in digital history, to the new Public History concentration at the undergraduate level, through to our world class public history graduate program. The journal and its works provides a public facing, real-world application of the teaching that we do in the Public History programme and Digital Humanities M.A..