In order to submit your UChicago-USussex IJRA Scholar program application, please identify which research project/mentor you would like to work with from the projects listed below. If you are interested and qualified for more than one, please rank your top choice, followed by your second (and if you wish, third) in your application.
Synopses are presented here; please be sure to click through to the full description of any project of interest!
Research Project #1: Mapping Absence in UK Copyright Libraries: This research offers an opportunity for a student to work within a digital humanities project that looks at gaps in the collections of copyright libraries. Legal deposit or copyright libraries are supposed to preserve all published texts, but they also reject, exclude, or neglect different types of texts due to lack of space, disinterest in particular genres, and other factors. Using digital tools and quantitative analyses, our research team is working out which texts are absent from deposit libraries and how the features of these texts change over time. Although our focus is nineteenth-century England, Scotland, and Ireland, we’re creating tools and methods that researchers interested in other regions and periods can use to map their own literary heritage through deposit—and its absences. The project is funded by the European Research Council and hosted by the Sussex Digital Humanities Lab. Full description downloadable here.
Research Mentor: Dr Hannah Field (and team), Associate Professor in Victorian Literature, University of Sussex
Research Project #2: Has reporting on linguistics (UK 2000–2025) improved? This project is no longer being offered for Summer 2026.
Research Project #3: AI Assistive Technology and Embodied Knowledge: Embracing Neurodiversity: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now integral to various sectors, including healthcare and education, and influences both current and future societal structures. As Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (2020) discusses, AI often do more than predict the future—they shape it. It is also well established that AI systems do replicate existing social norms and biases, reinforcing rather than challenging inequalities (Cathy O’Neil, 2017; Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, 2018; Ruha Benjamin, 2019). Within this technoscape, ChatGPT/DeepSeek have become highly significant AI tool, built on machine learning models and datasets that can embed and perpetuate deep-seated biases. The aim of this project is to investigate AI Assistive Technology, the production of knowledge and neurodiversity in Higher Education (HE). It questions how ChatGPT or other Assistive Technologies shape students' senses of authorship and neurodiverse learning experiences. The project is interdisciplinary and therefore welcomes candidates from Digital Media Studies, Computer Science and Engineering, Gender Studies, Disability Studies and Education. As such you are free to develop a specific area of research based on the broad description provided above. We are particularly interested in investigations into these platforms, which identify ways AI Assistive Technology support neurodiverse knowledge production. Full description downloadable here.
Research Mentor(s): Dr. Cécile Chevalier, Associate Professor in Media Practice; Dr. Em (Emma) Harrison, Assistant Professor in Digital Practice; Dr Kate O’Riordan, Professor of Digital Culture and Pro Vice Chancellor for Education and Students, University of Sussex
Research Project #4: Mapping Digital Holocaust Memory: How is the Holocaust commemorated across digital formats? What happens when traditional memory cultures developed in the broadcast era are transferred and translated through AI, computer games, VR and AR? Can sensitive and difficult histories be made ‘playable’? Do so called ‘new media’ do anything new for collective memory cultures? The Landecker Digital Memory Lab launched the Digital Memory Database in January 2026. This platform allows registered users to explore walkthroughs of a wide range of digital projects engaging in Holocaust memory from across the world, complemented by interviews by those involved in developing them (including from creative designers, technical teams, curators, educators, and survivors). The platform also has a wider database of projects that are either obsolete or not yet archived by the team, presenting the global reach of digital Holocaust memory from the 1990s to the present day.
The Lab is offering the potential for an International Junior Research Associate to develop their own small-scale research project doing one of the following:
- Desk research discovering details of new digital Holocaust memory projects across the world
- Recording walkthroughs of remote projects that can be accessed from the University of Sussex (this might be social media, virtual reality, online exhibitions, computer games, or AI projects, for example)
- Analysing a selection of already recorded walkthroughs and interviews related to a specific theme or technology
- Using data visualisation tools to explore trends across digital projects in the collection
Full description downloadable here.
Research Mentor(s): Dr Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden, Professor of Digital Memory, Heritage, and Culture, University of Sussex
Research Project #5: Charlotte Smith in Brighton, 1791-93: Moral Feeling and Migration in a Revolutionary Age:
This project focuses on the Romantic-era poet and novelist, Charlotte Smith (1749-1806), who grew up in Sussex and lived in the region throughout her life. Long recognised for her influential Elegiac Sonnets (1784) and landscape writing, as well as for her radical politics, this project focuses on her life and writing in the period 1791-1793 when she was living in Brighton, to submit both these aspects of her work to closer investigation, and to explore their interconnection. This research project seeks to explore how Smith reconciled – in her writing and in her life - her commitment to the cosmopolitan principle of hospitality to strangers with what an acquaintance at this time called her ‘democratic twist’. Full description downloadable here.
Research Mentor(s): Dr Catherine Packham, Professor of 18th Century Literature, University of Sussex