Hi there! My name is Graham Jensen, and I’m a Research Officer with the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. Previously, I was an Assistant Director and Digital Humanities Research Lead in the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL) at the University of Victoria (UVic). At UVic, I also worked as a Mitacs Accelerate Industrial Postdoctoral Fellow in Open, Collaborative Scholarship (Arts & Humanities) and Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) Postdoctoral Fellow in Open Social Scholarship, as well as a Limited Term Assistant Professor and SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English. In 2021, I was a finalist for the SSHRC Impact Talent Award, which recognizes “the most accomplished social sciences and humanities researchers in Canada.” But I’d like to think I haven’t peaked yet.

I have leadership and research experience in multiple disciplinary contexts. I thrive on building positive, mutually beneficial partnerships and relationships across knowledge domains and sectors, which I have done both at the national and international level in my work with diverse stakeholders ranging from research communities, librarians, administrators, technology professionals, students, and community members. Ever the optimist, I believe that knowledge is a public good and that we can both critique and create better ways of doing and supporting research by working together to collectively reimagine existing structures, systems, and methodologies.

My research interests span twentieth and twenty-first-century literatures in Canada, literary modernism, literature and religion, digital humanities, and open scholarship (with more specific interests in such topics as digital critical archives, digital research infrastructure, knowledge diversity, digital humanities publishing and pedagogy, research data management, community engagement, religious and cultural pluralization, unorthodox forms of religious expression in literature, “late” modernisms, cross-border influences between Canada and the US, periodical studies and little-magazine manifestos, epiphanies, poetry about poetry, the Künstlerroman tradition, alcohol in modernist fiction, and much more). My most recent scholarship—on digital platforms, knowledge commons, multilingualism and language diversity in digital research infrastructure, and the preservation of knowledge in the humanities and social sciences—has been featured in venues such as Digital Humanities Quarterly and the Journal of Electronic Publishing.

I am Principal Investigator of the Canadian Modernist Magazines Project (CMMP). The CMMP serves as a public-facing virtual research platform for those interested in reading, analyzing, or teaching Canadian modernist literature. With the support of more than ten partner institutions in Canada and the United States, the CMMP has digitized a selection of canonical and non-canonical Canadian modernist “little magazines,” beginning with Neith (1903-4), Le Nigog (1918), Preview (1942-44), and First Statement (1942-45). Other DH projects include Mapping Religion in the Global Anglophone Novel, the Humanities and Social Sciences Commons, and the Mary Butts Letters Project.

I am also the author of Unorthodox Modernisms: Varieties of Religious Expression in Twentieth-Century Canadian Poetry (under advance contract with University of Toronto Press). This scholarly monograph is a revised version of my dissertation, “Canadian Modernist Poetry and the Rise of Personal Religions,” which was the recipient of the Dalhousie Doctoral Thesis Award and Malcolm Ross Thesis Award. It examined the notion of “personal religion”—advanced most memorably by American philosopher and psychologist William James—in relation to the mid-twentieth century poetry and unpublished writings of four major Canadian poets: E.J. Pratt, Margaret Avison, Louis Dudek, and P.K. Page. Some of my findings from this study were published in Further Directions in William James and Literary Studies and University of Toronto Quarterly. My research has also appeared in The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth and Religion, Canadian Digital Humanities, Interdisciplinary Digital Engagement in Arts & Humanities, Pop! Public. Open. Participatory, English Studies in Canada, Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, and other venues. I am also working on a critical edition of Louis Dudek’s multi-volume long poem Continuation (under advance contract with University of Ottawa Press).

As an instructor, I have designed and taught courses in Canadian literature, modern Canadian poetry (ca. 1920-1970), American modernism, Alcohol in Modernist Fiction (British, American, and Canadian), as well as an introductory course on prose and fiction. In the classroom, where I channel the nerdy zeal and curiosity of Rick Steves, I emphasize technology-enhanced and multimodal learning experiences, creative assignments, and interactive, respectful discussions facilitated in a variety of small- and large-group formats.

I like travel, food, founding collectives based around food (R.I.P., Halifax Gastronomic Society!—but hello, Boys Who Brunch), and getting entirely too engrossed in web design, spreadsheets, and Premier League soccer.