Alison Langmead holds a joint faculty appointment between the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh. She teaches and researches in the field of the digital humanities, focusing especially on applying digital methods mindfully within the context of visual and material culture studies.
For the Department of Art History and Architecture, Alison serves as the Director of the Visual Media Workshop (VMW). The mission of the VMW is to develop and encourage the creation of innovative methods for producing, disseminating, and preserving the academic work using digital technologies as a fundamental component of our scholarly toolkit. To achieve these objectives, she directs a technologically-focused environment of collaboration and creativity where students and faculty from a number of departments across the University come together to work on projects that apply digital methods and techniques with focus and intention.
For the School of Computing and Information (SCI), Alison researches the relationship between the historical practice of information management and digital computing, both as a historical narrative and also as a complex, changing process in contemporary America. This research, plus all of the theories, concepts, and models that she teaches at SCI, are put into daily practice in her work directing the VMW.
In terms of teaching, Alison teaches courses in digital culture and the digital humanities, especially, but not exclusively, at the graduate level.
Alison is also the principal contact for the DHRX: Digital Humanities Research at Pitt initiative, which represents a transdisciplinary network of scholars here at the University of Pittsburgh who use digital methods to study the ways in which humans interact with their environments, whether social or cultural, natural or human-created.
- PhD, Columbia University
- MLIS, University of California at Los Angeles
Education & Training
- Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentoring, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, May 2023
Langmead, Alison, et al. “Network Analysis + Digital Art History: A Roundtable on a Collective Scholarly Experience.” The International Journal for Digital Art History 2021_22, no. 7 (May 3, 2024): https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/dah/article/view/90725
Langmead, Alison and Annette Vee. “Teaching the Digital Humanities to a Broad Undergraduate Population.” In What We Teach When We Teach DH: Digital Humanities in the Classroom, edited by Brian Croxall and Diane Jakacki, 26-39. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2023.
Langmead, Alison, Christopher J. Nygren, Paul Rodriguez, and Alan Craig. “Leonardo, Morelli, and the Computational Mirror.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 15, no. 1 (2021): https://dhq.digitalhumanities.org/vol/15/1/000540/000540.html.
Langmead, Alison and David Newbury. “Pointers and Proxies: Thoughts on the Computational Modeling of the Phenomenal World.” In The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History, edited by Kathryn Brown, 358-373. London: Routledge, 2020.
Ellenbogen, Josh and Alison Langmead. “Forms of Equivalence: Bertillonnage and the History of Information Management.” Technology and Culture 61, no. 1 (January 2020): 207-238.
Berg-Fulton, Tracey, Alison Langmead, Thomas Lombardi, David Newbury, and Christopher Nygren. “A Role-Based Model for Successful Collaboration in Digital Art History.” International Journal for Digital Art History 3 (2018): 152-80.
Langmead, Alison. “Art and Architectural History and the Performative, Mindful Practice of the Digital Humanities." The Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy 12 (February 12, 2018).
Armstrong, Christopher Drew, Lily Brewer, Jennifer Donnelly, Alison Langmead, and Vibeka McGyver. “Itinera’s Displacements: A Roundtable.” Journal18, Special Issue “Coordinates” 5 (Spring 2018).
Langmead, Alison, Paul Rodriguez, Sandeep Puthanveetil Satheesan, and Alan Craig. “Extracting Meaningful Data from Decomposing Bodies.” In Proceedings of Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing 2017, New Orleans, Louisiana, July 9-13, 2017 (PEARC17). Awarded Best Paper in the “Accelerating Discovery in Scholarly Research” Track.
Birnbaum, David J. and Alison Langmead. “Task-Driven Programming Pedagogy in the Digital Humanities.” In New Directions for Computing Education: Embedding Computing across Disciplines, edited by Samuel B. Fee, Amanda M. Holland-Minkley, and Tom Lombardi, 63-85. New York: Springer, 2017.
Cox, Richard, Alison Langmead, and Nora Mattern, eds. Archival Research and Education: Selected Papers from the 2014 AERI Conference. Sacramento: Litwin Books, 2015.
Invited Talks
“Considering AI: Its Potential as a Resource for Art Scholarship & Charitable Practice.” Invited keynote presented alongside David Newbury (Getty) for the Aspen Institute Artist-Endowed Foundations Initiative, online, April 24, 2024.
“Sustainability in the Age of ‘Generative’ Computation.” Invited talk presented at the Center of Digital Humanities Research (CoDHR) at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, February 28, 2024.
“Artificial Intelligence, Connoisseurship, and Humanity.” Invited talk presented alongside Christopher J. Nygren for the Safra Colloquy at the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., May 5, 2023.
“Studying Images through and with Technologies.” Invited talk for the Technological Revolutions and Art History Symposium, co-hosted by The Frick Art Reference Library and the Museum of Modern Art, online, October, 15, 2020. https://youtu.be/Ky6zal0xbCU
“Programming Mentorship.” Keynote for Code4Lib 2020, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 2020. https://youtu.be/avfjLyHszps?t=124
“Can Computers Do Research?” Presentation for an invitation-only workshop held at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science entitled, “What Is Research?” Berlin, Germany, June 12-13, 2019.
“Art and Architectural History and the Performative, Mindful Practice of the Digital Humanities.” Digital Dialogues Talk, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, February 2018.
“Itinera: People, Objects, and Sites.” Digital Provenance Symposium, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, November 2017.
“What is Curiosity and Can It Be Learned?" Invited panel presentation for the “Year of the Humanities in the University” initiative, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, November 2015.
Academic Presentations
“Teaching the Digital Humanities to a Broad Undergraduate Population.” Paper presented at the 2003 Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, Graz, Austria, July 2023.
“Digital Sustainability and Digital Art History: Alison Stones’ Impact.” Roundtable presentation at the 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 2023.
“Extracting and Analyzing Deep Learning Features for Discriminating Historical Art.” Paper presented with Paul Rodriguez at Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC ’20), online conference, July 2020.
“Forms of Equivalence: Bertillonnage and the History of Information Management.” Paper presented with Josh Ellenbogen at Digital Frontiers 2018, University of Kansas Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities, Lawrence, Kansas, October 2018.
“What Do We Want Digital History to Look Like Now?” Panel presentation at the 132nd Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Washington, D.C., January 2018.
“A Socio-Technical Digital Preservation Roadmap.” Paper presented with Aisling Quigley at the 2017 NDSA Digital Preservation Conference, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 2017.
“A Role-Based Model for Successful Collaboration in the Digital Humanities.” Paper presented with David Newbury and Christopher Nygren at the 2017 Keystone Digital Humanities Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 2017.
“Ubiquitous Computing and Surveillance Culture." Half-day symposium organized and produced for the Year of the Humanities at the University of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh, April 2016.
“Computational Visual Aesthetics.” Full-day symposium co-organized and produced for the Year of the Humanities at the University of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh, November 2015.
Curatorial Work
Lead Curator, Data (after)Lives: The Persistence of Encoded Identity, University Art Gallery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, September 9-October 14, 2016.
Digital Projects
Teaching Art History with AI
Principal Investigator
Peer pedagogy workshop and OER publications, 2023-present
InfoEco Cookbook
Initial design 2021; production and testing 2021-2022; OER publication 2022
The Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap
Principle Investigator
Draft and design 2015; production and testing 2017-2018; dissemination 2017-present
Itinera
Technical Director and Lead Project Manager
Initial design, 2012; alpha prototype, 2013-2014; beta prototype, 2015-present
