Curating Kisumu: Adapting Mobile Humanities Interpretation in East Africa

The Center for Public History + Digital Humanities (CPHDH) at Cleveland State University and Maseno University in Kenya seek NEH Level II Start-Up funding for Curating Kisumu to extend best practices for mobile interpretation to the developing world. CPHDH will explore how to use the Curatescape mobile interpretive framework to facilitate interchange between the humanities and pressing needs in East Africa. Faculty and students on both sides of the Atlantic will conduct collaborative research. Our team will also explore how to modify Curatescape to enable bilingual user inputs on the administrative backend and to allow the richest possible experience for users who use still-prevalent feature phones. Our team will develop an educational exchange to create content; develop, implement, and test an app that we adapt thoughtfully to local needs and technical constraints; and collaboratively identify a set of recommendations for overcoming barriers to mobile curation in Africa.