Projects
Software, research methods, and collaborations
The lab’s projects bring 3D documentation, immersive environments, and close attention to evidence into a growing range of research questions across the humanities and social sciences.
Research and collaborations
Current software and collaborations bring together work on cultural heritage, community knowledge, and new research methods. The examples below include projects developed through Craig’s wider research network.
Loci
Loci connects details of 3D objects with recorded interpretations, timed transcripts, and citations. Developed through collections research and fieldwork, it lets readers move between an object and the knowledge people bring to it. The public research collection and open-source software offer ways to explore this approach.
Community interpretation in Liberia
Working with Liberian colleagues and knowledge holders, Craig Stevens developed a VR-based method for interpreting digitized museum objects. Elders, heritage professionals, and community leaders explore objects and contribute recorded narratives. This work informs collection records, research, and digital presentation through Loci.
Leimert Park Digital Archive
Craig contributes 3D documentation and metadata methods to a community archive for Queen Aminah’s African art collection. The work with We Love Leimert and UCLA connects photogrammetry, photography, oral history, and collection stewardship in Leimert Park, Los Angeles.
Methods in development
FieldScene
Tattoo documentation
Primate movement analysis
Collections and teaching
Research with the African collection at Art Galleries at Black Studies connects object histories, provenance research, 3D documentation, and community interpretation. This developing work explores collection description, teaching, and future digital encounters with African art.
The lab brings research into digital design through close work with collections, archives, and historical sources. Two courses planned for spring 2027 connect this approach with African and African Diaspora Studies: Black Lives in the Archives, centered on object histories and the AGBS African collection, and Technologies of Displacement and Resistance, a research and design studio working with the Black Diaspora Archive.
Interested in working with the lab?