Biography
Sarah Ketchley is an Egyptologist with a specialty in art history in the first millennium BCE. She is co-founder of Newbook Digital Texts and teaches 'An Introduction to Digital Humanities' at UW. Inspired by intrepid women travelers of the 19th century, she has been working with student interns to digitize and publish the Nile travel diaries of Mrs. Emma B. Andrews. Working computationally to analyse the content of Emma's writings, Sarah and her students have created an extensive digital biographical database, interactive maps and an archive of encoded primary source material. Sarah is the digital Project Manager of the Baki Project, which aims to identify and transcribe the many poems of Baki, arguably the most famous Ottoman poet of all.
I research Nile travel in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, transcribe letters and diaries describing excavation in the Valley of the Kings during this so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Egyptian archaeology, wrangle computer code, build digital tools for interpreting historical and literary data, and share my knowledge and passion for my work with my students. I encourage them to experiment and hypothesize; to ask questions and not to be afraid of making mistakes. It’s how the best learning happens!
The emphasis in Digital Humanities is on team work and I love this model, since it builds relationships, encourages individual responsibility and group accountability. I enjoy the dynamics of working with students in this environment, since we all learn from each other.