TBDH Spring 2026: A Semester of Collaboration & Scholarly Growth

Among the highlights of the semester was the successful conclusion of the 2025–2026 TBDH Speaker Series, featuring Megan Senseney and Veronica Reyes-Escudero from the University of Arizona, Border stories: Toward ethical and sustainable frameworks for community engagement in borderlands research, curation, and storytelling. Throughout the week both invited speakers meet with the TBDH fellows, Co-PIs, as well as with faculty and librarians from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Recordings and materials from these sessions are available on the Transborder Digital Humanities website under the Speaker Series section, extending the reach of these conversations beyond the live events. We look forward to building on this momentum as we prepare for the next phase of the Speaker Series (stay tuned)!

This semester highlights a range of milestones and successes from our graduate and post-graduate fellows at UTSA, reflecting both individual achievement and collective growth within the TBDH community. Jessica Corona, who started with TBDH in Fall 2023, was accepted into five PhD programs and will be continuing her academic journey at the School of Information Science at the University of Arizona. Please join us in extending our congratulations and best wishes as she takes this next step in her academic path! Elisa Castro completed her first semester as a post-graduate fellow, where she served as assistant project manager for the upcoming project Geotestimonios Transfronterizos—please stay tuned for the announcement of the official site. She also served as fellows supervisor, while beginning to explore potential PhD programs aligned with her research interests. 

Lastly, we would like to congratulate Cristina Ortiz who is in the early stages of developing her hybrid-thesis project in the Spanish Master’s program, where she will focus on music and artists from the border, laying the foundation for an important contribution to border studies and cultural expression. Through TBDH, our fellows have been supported in developing transborder research, community-centered knowledge production, and bilingual digital humanities praxis.

In addition, Dra. Sylvia Fernández and Jessica, taught two courses this semester that further advanced TBDH’s pedagogical and interdisciplinary mission: ENG–5763 / ENG–7053 (Graduate Course) Latina/o Literature and Digital Humanities/ Hispanic-Latino Digital Worlds and SPN–3173 / COM–4413, Multilingual Digital Worlds (Undergraduate Course). Likewise, Elisa will join Dra. Fernández in the Fall to teach ENG 6973 / SPN 6813: Capstone in Digital Humanities/ Special Topics in Hispanic Studies.

This semester further included a series of impactful book talks and public-facing scholarly events that continued to strengthen TBDH’s commitment to transborder, multilingual, and community-engaged digital humanities. TBDI Co-PI Dra. Laura Gonzales presented Border Mapping: A Participatory Community Design of the Mexico–USA Borderlands alongside co-authors Dra. Eda Özyeşilpinar and Dr. Victor J. Del Hierro as part of the Humanities Mapping Interest Group. The presentation highlighted participatory design approaches to border studies, emphasizing community collaboration in the creation of digital and spatial knowledge. In addition, Dra. Carolina Alonso presented Juego peligroso: historias de lucha y diversidad en el futbol femenil in Dra. Maira Álvarez’s class at the University of Toronto, offering critical perspectives on women’s football, gender, and narratives of struggle and diversity within sport.

This semester marked significant scholarly production and participation across several conferences by members of our TBDH center-consortium, reflecting the continued impact of TBDH work in transborder and digital humanities spaces:

• Conference participation in Spring 2026
  • Emily Gracielle Rodriguez presented at the CLAGS and CUNY Queer Studies Conference (April 17–18, 2026), with the paper “Latine Queerstories: Testimonios Orales de Migración un Autoarchivo Comunitario de Humanidades Digitales Transfronterizas,” highlighting oral testimonios, migration, and community-based digital archiving practices.
• Conference participation in Summer 2026
  • Dra. Laura Gonzales, TBDH Co-PI and Assistant Professor of Digital Writing and Cultural Rhetorics at the University of Florida, was featured as a keynote speaker at the ACH 2026 Conference (June 24–26, 2026) with the lecture “Community, Participation, and Transborder Technology Design.” Her talk explored how communities, scholars, and practitioners collaborate to create more human-centered technologies and sustain community knowledge within digital humanities. .
  • Dra. Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla, delivered the keynote “Humanidades Digitales Públicas en Contextos Fronterizos: Comunidades, Prácticas y Saberes” at the I Jornadas de Humanidades Aplicadas: Humanidades Públicas y Humanidades Digitales en el Contexto Actual, (hosted on May 12–14, 2026) at Universidad Andrés Bello, República Campus in Santiago, Chile. Her talk took shape around contemporary discussions connected to digital and public humanities, culture and technology, archives, memory and communities, and situated research practices.
    • Read more about the conference here: https://noticias.unab.cl/doctorado-en-humanidades-aplicadas-unab-realizo-jornadas-sobre-humanidades-publicas-y-digitales/ 
• Conference participation in Fall 2026
  • TBDH Post-Master’s Fellows Elisa Castro and Jessica Corona have been accepted to present at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association in Chicago, Illinois. Their presentation, “The Ethics of Improvisation: Counter-Archives, Collaboration, and Community Formation,” will be delivered in collaboration with graduate student co-presenters Nathalie Martinez (PhD student in Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and René Arteaga (Ph.D. candidate in American Studies, University of Texas at Austin).
  • Brian Rosenblum, TBDH Co-PI and Director of the Institute for Globally Engaged Librarianship at the University of Kansas Libraries, will present at the VII Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Argentina de Humanidades Digitales, “El futuro de las humanidades digitales: preservación, sustentabilidad y sostenibilidad,” held at Universidad Nacional de Río Negro (Viedma, Río Negro) November 11–13, 2026. His talk, “Still, We Build: Collaboration Across Borders in Digital Humanities,” centers collaborative transborder digital humanities practices.

In partnership with the Latin American and Caribbean Digital Humanities team, TBDH is co-leading the planning and organization of the 4th Annual Latin American & Caribbean Digital Humanities Symposium (2026), under the theme of Transfronteras: Third Spaces, which will take place September 8–10, 2026, in person at UT San Antonio, with additional virtual sessions scheduled for the week of September 21. The symposium received over 91 accepted submissions, with more than 190 participants expected both online and in person. While the call for proposals has now closed, we invite you to join us during the in-person and online symposium and  follow our social media platforms (@transborderdh) for updates during the conference and to learn more about our presenters. We also want to highlight the participation of TBDH fellows, Co-PIs, and our PI:

• “Archiving Against Erasure: Transborder Feminist Digital Memory and the Paso del Norte Antifeminicide Movement”- Dra. Sylvia Fernández, Jessica Corona, Emily Rodriguez, Cristina Ortiz, Subadra de Tagle, and Jasbeth Medrano 
• “Concientizando Comunidades Colectiva: Building ethical, feminist community digital archives in Tejas”- Dra. Sylvia Fernandez, Graciela Sanchez, Dra. Liliana Saldaña, Dra. Sylvia Mendoza, Dra. Stephanie Gonzales, Elisa Castro, Cristina Soliz
• “Training Across Borders: Reflections from Transborder Digital Humanities Fellows”- Jessica Corona, Elisa Castro, Emily Rodriguez, Cristina Ortiz, Subadra Tagle
• “Transborder Digital Humanities in Practice: Building a Collaborative, Feminist, and Interdisciplinary Ecologies” Dra. Sylvia Fernandez, Dra. Sylvia Mendoza, Dra. Stephanie Gonzalez, Dra. Carolina Alonso, Dra. Maira Alvarez, Dra. Laura Gonzales, and Brian Rosenblum

We are also honored to highlight the in-person keynote participation of Nansi Guevara, a public artist, illustrator, and community storyteller from the Rio Grande Valley, who will present her work on Nuestra Delta Magica. As well as Dr. Diego Bonilla and Dra. Nancy Huante-Tzintzun from the Department of Communication Studies at California State University, Sacramento who will present their VR Chicana & Latina Testimonio Project.

We are equally excited to feature our online keynote speakers, including Ivonne Ramírez, who will present her U.S.–Mexico border project, Ellas Tienen Nombre, and Dr. Anderson Luis do Espírito Santo, who will share his work on the Brazil–Bolivia border project, OBISFRON.

Saludos,

TBDH-UTSA Team