Gdrf 2025

content/news/posts/gdrf-2025/index.md

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+---
+title: "Graduate Digital Research Fellowship — 2025"
+date: 2026-01-28
+draft: false
+aliases:
+  - "/posts/gdrf-2025/"
+---
+by {{< profile id="musgrave" >}}
+
+<br>
+
+LDaCA ran a Graduate Digital Research Fellowship (GDRF) program in [2023](../gdrf/) and [2024](../gdrf-2024/). In 2025,  Research Support and Training Lead {{< profile id="musgrave" >}} and Research Analytics Lead {{< profile id="hames" >}} again coordinated the program, making two key changes intended to enable the program to expand in future years.
+
+The changes were:
+1. We ran the program entirely online. In previous years, the inclusion of face-to-face activities limited the pool of potential participants to people in South East Queensland. Moving online was intended to open the program to participants from anywhere in Australia. We met this goal, with one participant joining us from Sydney and another from Perth (and posing a scheduling challenge!).
+2. We enlarged the pool of experts who could act as mentors in the program by inviting participation of organisations with which we already collaborate. This included the [Digital Observatory](https://www.digitalobservatory.net.au/) team at Queensland University of Technology and the [Melbourne Data Analytics Platform](https://www.unimelb.edu.au/mdap) at The University of Melbourne. In the end, only assistance from Digital Observatory was called on, with Robert Fleet acting as a mentor in the program. We thank him for his contribution.
+
+<br>
+
+The 2025 GDRF program supported a small group of research students to explore the possibilities of digital scholarship, particularly in HASS. The Fellows were students undertaking extended research projects, who spent 12–15 weeks learning about digital and computational skills to enhance their current research/thesis topic, or to work on an independent digital project. They explored digital research methods in areas including:
+- visualising data from language research
+- managing digital heritage material in community settings
+- using computational methods to uncover knowledge structures in text.
+
+The Fellows met regularly in activities to develop a sound understanding of digital research methods and tools, including seminars and training workshops. They also had access to mentors who advised and collaborated on their digital projects.
+
+
+<br>
+{{< image Src="/gdrf-2025/gdrf-2.png" Alt="Participants in the 2025 Graduate Digital Research Fellowship program" Desc="2025 GDRF Participants: Alex, Simon and Sam (top row), Elaine and Oscar (bottom row)" Title="2025 GDRF Participants: Alex, Simon and Sam (top row), Elaine and Oscar (bottom row)" Ref="LDaCA"  Height="400" >}}
+
+<br>
+
+Our three Graduate Digital Research Fellows in 2025 were:
+
+**Elaine Yan Li**: Just before joining our program, Elaine submitted her PhD thesis at The University of Sydney. The thesis looked at questions around how second language learners develop knowledge of vocabulary in the language which they are learning, and how that knowledge can be assessed. A substantial portion of the research used quantitative methods, and Elaine was keen to improve her skills in working with such data using statistical analysis packages. She was especially keen to look at ways to explore and present data using effective visualisations. Elaine was the participant who benefitted from our association with the Digital Observatory, having Robert Fleet as her mentor.
+
+Elaine said, “This mentorship is very useful for you to explore your own data, your own research fields. I have no experience in coding. Robert was really encouraging and helped me try out some quantitative methods”
+
+<br>
+
+**Alex Stephenson**: Alex is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia. His research is multidisciplinary, including aspects of linguistics, archaeology and heritage studies, and looks at the post-digitisation future of heritage materials held by language centres in Western Australia. For the GDRF program, Alex focused on what sustainable data management practices for digital data (particularly language data) might look like, given the special circumstances of language centres. Ben Foley mentored Alex, contributing his expertise and time with great generosity, and the work was of such mutual interest that their discussions have continued beyond the period of the fellowship program.
+
+Alex said, “Prior to the GDRF program, I felt that while my research explores the social aspect of post-digitisation, I was somewhat lacking in the more practical hands-on side of things. I learned so much in my mentor meetings with Ben that has given me not only a stronger understanding of these practical issues, but also how to approach them in different contexts. I also really enjoyed meeting with the GDRF team and discussing many aspects of digital research that I had never thought about before. This was a super supportive environment to explore these digital issues and I’d highly recommend anyone to participate in this program.”
+
+<br>
+
+**Oscar Toohey**: Oscar joined the program in a gap between completing a masters degree by research and commencing a PhD at Griffith University. His research looks at how hospitality industry staff negotiate the relationship between hospitality service and alcohol policy. Before embarking on the PhD journey, Oscar was keen to gain some knowledge about how to work with policy documents, especially to explore the extent to which text analytic tools might be an aid to such research. But we have come to expect that initial plans are open to change in our program. What Oscar actually ended up doing, aided by his mentor Sam, was consider what he might be looking for in the data he was examining. The answer to this question implied structures of knowledge contained in the data and Oscar also considered how such structures might be represented.
+
+Oscar said at the end of the GDRF program, “I have learned to navigate big data sets much more easily, so now I feel like I can offer much better contributions to existing work with my qualitative methods…The way I approach my PhD will be extremely different. I feel like my PhD will be a lot more collaborative now.”
+
+<br>
+
+As in previous years, Sam and Simon were excited to take part in intensive discussions about different kinds of data and different methodological approaches to data, and to interact with a group of very talented researchers.
+
+The GDRF program will run again in 2026, and again, LDaCA is hoping to attract participants from across the country. If you are interested in the program, you can submit an Expression of Interest via a [Google Form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf1Zsg6aH7WreNfb6ilzD-fMzrTS7VTjdN3IGou65mZ1_Hi8A/viewform?usp=preview), or you can contact one of the organisers by [email](mailto:s.musgrave@uq.edu.au).
+
+<br>