Completed Projects
The Digital Borderlands team provided funding to research teams at the University of Arizona through a competitive process, enabling the teams to undertake innovative projects focused on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. In total, eight projects were selected, with four projects selected for each round of distributed funding. Each project chosen exemplifies data-intensive research in the humanities and humanistic social sciences with a strong emphasis on digital storytelling.
We invite you to explore the resources below and discover more about the exceptional projects that were selected by the Digital Borderlands project team for the first distributed funding cohort. These projects are currently completed or are nearing completion. Please note that this is a dynamic page and it will be updated with additional information as it becomes available.
Oasis
The Oasis digital archive explores the ways in which Rarámuri people in Chihuahua City maintain cultural autonomy through rituals, handcrafts, sewing, and language. This archive is also associated with a forthcoming documentary film project based on the research of Victoria Blanco and her work building trust with the Rarámuri community of El Oasis beginning in 2010.
The collections comprise the personal archive of Amalia Holguin, the siríame, or governor, of El Oasis, as well as materials documenting a year of trust-building with the Rarámuri community in El Oasis and how the Rarámuri people maintain their cultural autonomy.
Explore, access, and browse the Oasis archival collections by visiting the Oasis project website here.
Borderlands Forensics
Citizen Forensics in the Borderlands is a binational project that documents, shares, and supports citizen forensics in the Sonora/Arizona border region. Using ethnography, oral history, photography, videography, digital media, and forensic techniques themselves, Citizen Forensics in the Borderlands is part of a growing movement that encourages and seeks to understand the practice of forensics by communities directly impacted by violence.
Explore, access, and browse the Borderlands Forensics by visiting the Borderlands Forensics project website here.
DETAINED
Voices from the Migrant Incarceration System
This project is a collaboration between the University of Arizona and the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project to collect and publicly archive the stories of asylum seekers and undocumented migrants incarcerated by immigration authorities in Arizona. Working collaboratively with former detainees, the project team documents detention experiences using diverse mediums such as writing, visuals, and audio. The powerful testimonies are combined with correspondence, art, and digital storytelling techniques to provide a comprehensive depiction of the growth of the migrant detention industry.
Serving as a counter-memorial and tangible evidence of the expansive for-profit immigrant detention landscape, the contents of this archive extend beyond academic and scholarly circles and encourage public engagement with the marginalized voices at the heart of the immigrant detention industry.
Visit the DETAINED project website here to learn more about the DETAINED project and browse the archival collections.
Border Hub | Centro Fronterizo
Border Hub | Centro Fronterizo is a data-driven digital storytelling hub reporting on race and ethnicity in the Arizona-Sonora borderlands between 1882-1924. The project website serves as a centralized hub for data-focused humanities research, teaching, and digital storytelling that brings historical intent and context to contemporary questions about race and ethnicity in the borderlands.
Accessible in English as well as Spanish, the materials available through Border Hub | Centro Fronterizo are developed to help users create their own digital stories and pedagogical tools using digital storytelling platforms.
Learn more about the project by navigating to the Border Hub | Centro Fronterizo project website here.
Mapping Racist Covenants
The Mapping Racist Covenants (MRC) Project demonstrates the importance of housing equity. Housing injustice is a keystone issue underlying many of today’s challenges facing the United States. Racist housing policies have actively disenfranchised people of color and other minoritized communities, making it difficult to secure fair housing and achieve opportunity. Racist covenants are a significant but largely unexplored example of institutional housing discrimination. The MRC project delivers an interactive web-based map highlighting the geography of racist CCRs in Tucson.
Visit the Mapping Racist Covenants project website to learn more about racist covenants, interact with the map, and gain access to other resources, including numerous historical photographs of Tucson.
Discovering Community in the Borderlands
The Discovering Community in the Borderlands project guides users through an exploration of this borderland city through augmented reality experiences throughout Tucson. This unique experience allows visitors to learn more about the diverse communities of Southern Arizona through sharing stories of community history and culture, brought to life by an immersive augmented reality experience with culture specialists, tradition bearers, cultural objects, photographs, dance, music, poetry, and more.
We encourage you to learn more about the Discovering Community in the Borderlands project by exploring the project website.
secrets of the agave
secrets of the agave centers everyday stories from the US-Mexico borderlands to learn first-hand from communities who are combating climate change in community-centered ways, what we consider acts/practices of Climate Justice. Climate Justice, according to Mary Robinson, “insists on a shift from a discourse on greenhouse gases and melting ice caps to a civil rights movement with the peoples and communities most impacted by and vulnerable to climate impacts at its heart.” People of color and those experiencing poverty are disproportionately affected by climate change and climate change mitigation policy. Their everyday stories, experiential and traditional knowledges, however, are missing from the data; their presence is only based on deficit-driven demographics. This project offers their distinct cultural perspectives that fortify, animate, and complicate data sets.
Engage with the secrets of the agave project by visiting the project website.
DISCAPAZ
Disability Experiences in the Borderlands
DISCAPAZ: Disability Experiences in the Borderlands centers the voices and narratives of people with disabilities living along the U.S.-Mexico border through multimedia storytelling. The project captures the shared stories of lived experience with disability, highlighting the unique strengths and resilience of individuals, families, and communities. Aiming to amplify disabled voices in the borderlands, the stories shared provide a better understanding of community challenges, needs, and strengths.
Visit the DISCAPAZ project website to learn more about the project and explore oral histories, scrapbooking, and resources.
Project Proposals
Before the projects began, there was first a proposal submission and competitive application process. Learn more about the first cohort of selected project proposals at their initial onset by exploring the StoryMap created by Bianca Finley Alper (Digital Borderlands, Graduate Intern, Fall 2021). Click on the Cohort 1 button below to navigate directly to the informational page.
The Digital Borderlands team has awarded funding to support two project cohorts. Although the work for the second cohort of projects is still underway, you can learn more about the project proposals by clicking on the Cohort 2 button below.
