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When Maggie Sardino thinks about scholarships, her first thought isn’t academics but lived experience.

Sardino was awarded the 2022 Fulbright-MITACS Globalink scholarship, which consists of completing an advanced research project for 10 to 12 weeks over this summer in Canada. Students will explore their specific research interests and experience Canada through recreational experiences.

“My goal is to create a space for non-academic audiences to really share their voice and their expertise within digital humanities scholarship,” Sardino said. “What I’m really looking forward to in this project, and why I ended up applying for it, is that I’m really passionate about legitimizing many different forms of expertise, both from educational backgrounds, but also really importantly from lived experience.”

Sardino will spend her summer at the University of Victoria in British Columbia to work on her project, “Digital Humanities: Open Scholarship.”

“I’m really looking forward to learning from the leaders in community-based research in an open access scholarship,” Sardino said. “I really, really want to be able to learn as much as I can as well as be able to produce research myself that really sort of takes digital humanities scholarship to the next level and creates more accessible scholarship.”

Brice Nordquist, an associate professor in the writing department, reviewed Sardino’s application and wrote a recommendation letter on her behalf.

Nordquist said Sardino has put in the work during her time at Syracuse University. She has engaged in research opportunities, assistantships and capstone projects for different programs, many of which Sardino has done alongside Nordquist in humanities projects.

“I always encouraged students to bend or contour their educational experiences, their courses, their majors, toward their own goals and toward their own values and commitments as much as possible,” Nordquist said. “Maggie is a perfect example of somebody who has done that work, and bent all of them toward her commitment toward social justice.”

Sardino is a writing and rhetoric major in the College of Arts and Sciences and a citizenship and civic engagement major in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Her interest in literature will translate to her time at UVic this summer where she will conduct a type of literature review to better understand practices in open learning as it relates to digital humanities.

In addition, she will help create the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, which will bring together individuals to learn and share what they’ve learned about open access scholarship, Nordquist said. Sardino said the institute will be the largest event of its kind globally.

“I really see this scholarship as an opportunity to not only create scholarship that’s accessible to non-academic audiences, but also legitimize the expertise that non-academic audiences possess,” Sardino said.

Sardino worked alongside Nordquist as a co-facilitator of the Narratio Fellowship, a public humanities project. She’s also worked as the project manager and undergraduate research assistant on an engaged humanities team with the professor.

“She’s put in the work the whole time to get this kind of award,” Nordquist said. “She’s done it so skillfully and collaboratively and generously with other people around her. She’s just incredibly impressive.”

Published on March 23, 2022 at 10:37 pm

Contact Katie: ksmcclel@syr.edu | @katie_mcclellan