Faculty of Arts Digital Studio Graduate Internship Program: an interview with Canaan Lan
Felicia Lee
Canaan is a second-year PhD student at the School of Languages and Linguistics whose research interest lies in socio-phonetics. Canaan participated in the Digital Studio Graduate Internship Program organised by the Faculty of Arts in 2022.
Felicia spoke to Canaan about her experience embarking on the internship program, what she has learnt from it, and how she is able to bring her experiences and skills to her own PhD project.
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So Canaan, I understand that you were part of this really exciting opportunity with the Digital Studio Graduate Internship Program organised by the Faculty of Arts last year. What motivated you to take it up?
I received emails from the Arts Graduate News. Basically, they send these weekly emails to the graduate students, and then I saw this piece of information that they were looking for graduate students from the Faculty of Arts to partake in the internship program. Upon seeing that, I was like, “Yeah, why not?”
Also, I guess probably because I’m doing a socio-phonetic project investigating the socio-economic differences involved in the speakers of Singapore English, and in the field of socio-phonetics, we use quite a lot of programming languages and the digital tools. The program says that you will learn new or additional programming or digital tools, and also data management skills. So that’s the part that I was attracted to because I felt that I could learn something new, and at the same time, apply some of these skills to my PhD project.
Of course, it’s a bonus that it’s a paid opportunity as well! The internship lasts about three months, and we get paid for approximately 45 hours of work across three months. I think it’s quite feasible and manageable, so I took it up!
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The internship program sounds really fun and fulfilling. Could tell us more about your involvement in the project for the internship?
The project was called the Western Australian Legacies of British Slavery, and then it’s part of the ARC Discovery Projects. The scope of the project was to basically locate instances in which the names that were used in the Caribbean slave plantations were used again in colonial-era Australia. Australia was a colony of the British colonisation history, so it is not uncommon for the same street names that they use in the Caribbean plantations in other parts of the world. Hence, we try to trace the links between these places, and whether the same names were used.
And after the entire program, all the interns had to present their projects to other interns and supervisors in a showcase event. We had to introduce the project to our audience, and explain what we did, and why we did what we did. After which, feedback was given by the supervisors of the different projects. It was an eye-opening experience for me because we got to see the other projects that all the interns were involved in.
What was the purpose of the project that you were involved in, you think?
I didn’t touch the core part of the project, but I guess the aim was to educate the public or try to make the history known to most of the people. People may not be aware of the historical aspects behind a name in a particular place or in other parts of Australia. I think they were trying to bring that part of history out to light to the general population.
However, it’s not a simple task to draw the link from eons ago because at times, the name that they used in the past was very different from what they use nowadays. We can’t tell for sure if the name used in the past is the same name used now.
Another difficulty is that to get the locations, we need to know the coordinates so of the place. And then in the past, they don’t give the coordinates like what we have today digitally via GPS. They do not really provide coordinates with the numbers, but rather, they give details like the place is near a school, near a tree, or Northwest to this place. They give a reference point. But what about 100 years later? The tree or school may have already disappeared! So those were some of the difficulties of trying to locate the names of places using with limited resources.
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It sounds like hard work! Despite the difficulties, what did you enjoy most from the project, though?
I guess I was able to learn Python and you know, have a taste of it. I got to develop my digital skills. To be honest, I would say because I’m not really familiar with Python and I was so new to Python, I have to learn everything from scratch. So I use Python to clean up the data. I am familiar with R, so what I did was to transfer my knowledge of R into Python. For instance, I know that there are packages in R, so I’ll just do a Google search on the equivalent code of these R packages in Python.
Also, I would say that for most of our PhD projects, we are sole researchers, so we don’t really have to work or collaborate with other PhD students at this stage. Through this internship, I got to meet one PhD student, a fourth-year PhD student from another department. We worked well together as a team, and I think it was also beneficial to me, so yeah, I enjoyed this part of the internship as well.
And besides the points that you’ve mentioned, what other aspects do you think this internship has helped with your own PhD project?
I guess the entire process made me realize that you may set out with a certain hypothesis for certain projects that you have, but you also need to learn how to react to unforeseen circumstances, sort of to expect the unexpected, and to find ways to cope with these unexpected circumstances. I may have developed certain hypotheses for my PhD project, but it’s always good to adapt to unexpected changes and be flexible about things.
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I totally agree with you that it’s always good to be adaptable to changes and plan for the unexpected. Here’s a final question for you, Canaan! What would you say to prospective students who would like to embark on this internship program in future?
I would definitely encourage them to participate in the program because it really broadened my horizon. It’s also a good way to develop their digital skills. Not a lot of us, especially with an arts background, have coding skills in different programming languages so I feel that it’s a great platform for you to develop your skills. And you’re being paid for the hours!
You’ve made it sound so enticing that I think I might just hop on to participate in this program next year! Thank you so much for speaking with us, Canaan! All the best to your PhD journey!
Thank you, Felicia.
If you wish to know more about the other projects completed in 2022 under the Faculty of Arts Digital Studio Graduate Internship Program, click here for more information.