Hikma Collective Podcast: Season 4

00:00:07:14 - 00:00:37:02

Erica Machulak

Hello and welcome or welcome back to the Hikma Collective podcast. It's been a minute since we recorded our last season, uh, done a couple things between now and then. I wrote a book called Hustles for Humanists, Build a Business with Purpose.

 

You can check that out. It came out in 2025 with Rutgers University Press. Um, I had a baby and took a little bit of matleave to help him, you know, stay alive in this crazy world.

00:00:37:04 - 00:01:02:14

Erica Machulak

Also we've been doing a lot of the deep work with clients that you'll be hearing about this season. At Hikma through the Hikma Collective, our goal is to create space for creativity and joy. That's what we do.

 

And our sweet spot is working with experts who have rigorous research and have big ideas for what they want to achieve in the world. And we help them figure out how to get it done. 

 

00:01:02:15 - 00:01:26:03

Erica Machulak

Our tagline is want to change the world? Let's make a plan. And the way that we do that is by working with scholars at any career stage and at any stage in their projects to figure out what they need and who they need to work with to move their work forward. Sometimes that takes the form of grant writing, sometimes it's media writing, sometimes it's producing podcasts for our clients or getting in the room with them

 

00:01:26:03 - 00:01:54:14

Erica Machulak

And their partners to figure out how to get everyone on the same page in, and design projects that are feasible and make sense and serve everyone's collective goals and individual needs. So that is a really joyful process. All of the episodes that you'll hear are based on relationships that are years in the making, and I'm really proud of those connections more than anything else that I can say about what we do.

 

00:01:54:16 - 00:02:23:18

Erica Machulak

It's just a delight to get to work with these amazing clients and get to work with our amazing Hickman team that is making this podcast possible. As we speak, I am 39 weeks two days pregnant, getting ready to go on mat leave again any second. And so I am recording these intros. Anticipating that my team is going to make everything when I say sound better and more coherent as they always do.

 

00:02:23:18 - 00:02:54:17

Erica Machulak

But, the stories you're about to hear have brought me a ton of joy, and we can all use a little bit more joy in the humanities right now. So I hope that you get the same verve and vigor out of them as I have, and that you learn a little bit. If you're looking for inspiration about how to run your own collaborative humanities project, or just how to make your ideas take shape in the world.

 

00:02:54:19 - 00:03:19:24

Erica Machulak

The people here are the best examples I can offer of what great public scholarship looks like. And it's a true honor and a delight, and to be able to share these conversations with them. So without further ado, we're opening up this season with an amazing project run by doctors Francisco Peña, Katie Brown, and Francisco Gago. We'll hear from, very shortly.

 

00:03:20:01 - 00:03:58:17

Erica Machulak

And they're the awardees of a new Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada SSHRCPartnership grant, which is the biggest grant you can get from Shirk in Canada. For their project, The Confluence of Religious Cultures in Medieval History, geography a digital edition of the General e grand estoria and what you'll hear in this episode is not just context around why this text is so interesting and interesting and important, but really how the digital humanities are evolving and how this team came together to develop a collaborative model that is organic and authentic and really effective.

 

00:03:58:19 - 00:04:22:24

Erica Machulak

And part of that model is developing this really innovative training program that is training humanities scholars at all career stages, but especially emerging scholars, grad students, postdocs in how to think differently about what they bring to the table, how to work together, which is something that trainees don't often get in the humanities. And how to prepare for a world that's changing really rapidly.

 

00:04:23:03 - 00:04:44:09

Erica Machulak

I often say that one of the greatest skills that humanists can offer the world is our ability to thrive in ambiguity. And this project has done that so admirably and has a model to train others to do it, too. So enjoy.

 

00:04:44:11 - 00:05:01:17

Erica Machulak

Well, welcome. Paco. Paco and Katie. Heidi and I are both delighted to to be here with you to talk about your immensely important work and celebrate it. Katie, would you mind starting us that by telling us a little bit about what this project is?

 

00:05:01:19 - 00:05:25:09

Katie Brown

And first, thank you so much for having us here to talk about the project. So we are doing a digital edition of the General e grand estoria, which was a universal history commissioned by King Alfonso X, also known as El Sabio or the Wise, um, in the 12th, the 1200s to 13th century in Spain. And this is a hugely ambitious text.

 

00:05:25:13 - 00:06:04:23

 

Katie Brown

It's got over 6,000 pages, um, and it's bringing together Christian, Jewish and Muslim sources as well as classical sources and things, sometimes things they just made up. Um, and so the only way to understand that is to bring together a really interdisciplinary team. And so what we're doing the project then is on the one hand, digitizing, analyzing, editing and translating the text, but we're also trying to have a model for how you can bring together an international interdisciplinary team working across time zones, across languages to really unlock kind of all of the secrets of this text.

 

00:06:05:00 - 00:06:13:04

Erica Machulak

Incredible. And I, we'll just mention here you've just been awarded quite a lot of money to support this work. Is that right?

 

00:06:13:06 - 00:06:26:19

Katie Brown

Yes. Um, so we got a partnership grant from the SSHRC. I think that Paco Peña should tell us more about this as a project director.

 

00:06:26:21 - 00:06:52:15

Francisco Peña

Um, yeah, no, we, we bought this project really started like more than 10 years ago and we have been very much supported by the SSHRC agency. We start with the inside development grant, then we move to an inside grant and we finally got the big, um, the big one that is the partnership one. The nature of the, of the, of the project, the aim was always getting the partnership grant.

00:06:52:17 - 00:07:29:22

Francisco Peña

What happened is that, as you know, uh, you need to have a lot of background experience and kind of merits in SSHRC, in the SSHRC system in order to be successful with this one. So what we were doing before is like to get those merits and the knowledge and the, uh, putting everything together to, to achieve what we achieve now. So the interesting thing is that this project, we just got it, but at the same time, he has 10 years of history, but really what we are starting, uh, is at the same time new.

00:07:29:24 -00:08:04:14

 

Erica Machulak

And for listeners out there who aren't academics in Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada or SSHRC, um, is the, one of the three main federal agencies funding academic work in Canada. And that's, um, that's the agency that we're talking about here. The partnership grant is the biggest grant that they offer.

 

Um, so you mentioned this, this project has this amazing 10 year track record, and it's also new. Um, Paco Gago, can you tell us a little bit about where the project started and how it's, how it's, what's happened? What, what have the last 10 years been like?

00:08:04:16 - 00:08:08:06

Francisco Gago

You know, it started in a dark night in Kalamazoo.

 

00:08:08:08 - 00:08:09:13

Erica Machulak

Okay.

 

00:08:09:15 - 00:08:36:16

Francisco Gago

Oh, okay. I mean, I think Paco Peña had already started the project.

 

Uh, but I remember, uh, a number of years ago, I think before the pandemic, uh, there was a Kalamazoo, the International Conference of Medieval Studies in May. And there was a dinner that organized, IMANA, the Ibero-Medieval Association of North America organizes every year. 

 

00:08:36:18 - 00:09:52:11

 

Francisco Gago

And I didn't know he was there.

 

He knew I was there because somebody had told him, hey, if you're doing this, you need to talk to this guy. And, and I remember it was you and Fernando, I believe. 

 

So he was there. And then we talk about, oh, we're trying to do this. And I said like, hey, we already have done that.

 

We have the tools to do things because of a different project. And, and I think that was one of the things that for, for Paco and for Fernando is like, wow, that is really going to save time into what it is that we want to do. And when we go out for, I mean, applying for grants and everything, we have actual things that we can say we are, we have done, we have accomplished.

 

So that was a big thing. And then I believe that following fall, I was, I went to Kelowna just to, to talk about the project and everything. Fernando was also there.

 

And that's how we started putting things together and, and deciding how to approach things. And then it kept growing and growing and growing. And here we are.

 

 

00:09:52:13 - 00:10:57:16

 

Francisco Peña

I want to add that, that is very interesting because really there was the beginning of the project in the sense, because we had, at that time I had the partnership, the inside development grant. And they said development grant is, is you have an idea and you have to test the idea, that can happen. So I was with, I think with Guadalupe González at that, at that, at that conference in Kalamazoo. And I think that Jasmine was there as well. Yeah. And so we were just a few of us. And the idea is that we have this idea that would be fantastic. It is possible. And I just start to think before Kalamazoo, that was not going to be possible.

 

So the interesting thing is that meeting Paco in, at that dinner, it was really the beginning because it was like, yes, we can do it. Now I'm sure that we can, before that, I thought that was very difficult because of many different things. How to, the combination of digital humanities with everything else was very complex for me that I was completely out of that world.

00:10:57:18 - 00:11:06:19

Erica Machulak

And Paco Peña, tell us a little bit more. You said the complication of the digital humanities and everything else. What's the everything else?

 

What's makes, what makes this project hard?

 

00:11:06:21 - 00:11:35:20

Francisco Peña

It was very hard because of, okay, it's very hard for only one institution, because normally you need a core of students that will be working in the project and a core of a team, of a big team. So the, imagine you have a number of students at university that is a small, like is the campus of UBC Okanagan, you need to train the students in digital humanities in order to start doing the work. 

 

00:11:35:22 - 00:12:08:01

Francisco Peña

And then when you are spending all the time and the money training the students, they leave because they finish their studies. So you have to start all over again. So that was what was making it impossible…it was like, we needed people, train people to do a job. And at the same time, we needed like a corpus of students to be involved. And, and, and, and so that before talking with Paco, I thought this is going to be quite, quite tricky. 

 

00:12:08:01 - 00:12:55:17

Francisco Peña

We have to do it from the beginning. So, and also what was amazing is that to know more about the, the history of the, of the, of the, the work that Paco have done in, in connection with the Hispanic seminary and with the University of Wisconsin, all these amazing history of, of, of really putting together digital humanities in the service of Hispanics, Hispanic studies. And, and they had all these amazing, so it was getting like you are surfing. You have the board, but you don't see any wave. And then suddenly you hit, you see this huge wave that you can get. So really, I agree with Paco. This was the real beginning because before we were about to throw the towel, that was kind of a, we were testing the water, but there was no waves around.

 

00:12:55:19 - 00:13:47:11

Erica Machulak

Okay. So to give our listeners more of an image of what this looks like. So we've touched on two of the really innovative pieces of the work that you're doing.

 

One of which is the digital tool itself, which I want to talk about in a little bit. But the other is this challenge of onboarding and training people and then enabling them to do this work at scale, which is a problem that a lot of different organizations across sectors can relate to, but to do it in the humanities in particular is just such an incredible contribution. And Katie, I know that you have done quite a lot of work and even some, maybe some recent events related to the training.

 

So can you talk a little bit about what the trainees are learning, what they're doing and what that training model looks like now? 

 

00:13:47:13 - 00:14:14:09

Katie Brown

Yes. I've just come back from Spain where I've been with four of our latest trainees.

 

We are doing our training kind of very specifically so that students can work with the person who really knows about the subject. So in my case, I'm working with students who are doing the translation and then we'll have other students working specifically on editing, on annotation, on things to do with the history of the Spanish language, on new different sources and identifying those. 

 

00:14:14:09 - 00:14:50:20

Katie Brown

So as Paco was saying, being able to train those students is much more achievable if you're distributing them across all sorts of different universities and different disciplines.

 

So I came into the project in 2019 when Paco Peña visited Exeter for the first time that UBC and Exeter have kind of a special friendship. And at that time, Paco told me that he was probably going to hire someone to do the translation. And I'd been experimenting before that with paying some of my students to work on projects, research projects with me.

00:14:50:22 - 00:15:35:11

Katie Brown

I thought, wouldn't it be great if we could take our students, train them in this text and then pay them to work on it every year with the idea that then the previous cohort trains the next one. Let's see, we're on our fourth cohort now and every year that's just gotten easier. But we take them to La Rioja for a week to work with specialists in the history of the Spanish language and they really get a deep dive into how medieval Spanish works compared to the Spanish that they've been learning in their classes, but also into the text, kind of what Alfonso was trying to do with it, the kind of cultural background. They get to know members of the team over Zoom as well as working with people from the team who are actually based in La Rioja. 

 

00:15:35:13 - 00:15:56:11

Katie Brown

But over the years, we've also then had those students creating onboarding materials. So they've made a glossary, they've made a style guide, they've made a, this is what I wish I knew when I started the project.

 

And so every year it just gets easier and easier to bring in those new students and to help them really engage in this work right from the start. 

 

00:15:56:13 - 00:16:03:01

Erica Machulak

And so at this point, how many students and how many institutions are involved in the project?

 

00:16:03:03 - 00:16:16:24

Katie Brown

Oof, so they institutions we, at, I want to say 18.

 

00:16:17:01 - 00:16:18:19

Francisco Gago

Yeah, a little bit less than 20, I would say.

 

00:16:18:21 - 00:16:26:08

Erica Machulak

Wow. And that's across how many continents? 

 

00:16:26:10 - 00:16:30:00

Katie Brown

All of them? Actually, I don't think we've got anyone in Australasia just yet.

 

00:16:30:01 - 00:16:46:03

Francisco Peña

I can give you, so we are 56 scholars, 10 countries involved, 33 institutions involved. Wow. From these 33, 16 are not partners and 17 are partners.

 

00:16:46:05 - 00:16:48:20

Erica Machulak

Amazing. Okay.

 

00:16:48:22 - 00:17:11:22

Katie Brown

And so we're really just starting this off at the moment, the translation students were very much our test case to show how this can work, but now in the grant we've got money for 100 students working 200 hours each, but it could be more students doing fewer hours. So it's really involving a massive amount of students in this project. 

 

00:17:11:24 - 00:17:13:12

Erica Machulak

Wow.

 

00:17:13:14 - 00:17:55:03

Francisco Gago

Yeah, and depending on the student and everything, they can be involved in many of the different, it's not just the translation. I mean, they could be easily be working on issues more related to digital humanities with assisted translation and assisted polygraphical transcription, learning how to use the tools that have been created by other people for other projects that we have incorporated into the project and make a contribution with that. So that's the goal. It's just like, you need help. It's a huge test.

 

00:17:55:05 - 00:18:04:01

Erica Machulak

So Paco Gago, tell us more about that. What are some of these tools that are being integrated and what's the innovation in using them in the way that you are in this project?

 

00:18:04:03 - 00:18:35:20

Francisco Gago

So we want to do lots of things with the text. This is not the traditional edition on paper, which has limitations. I mean, this work has been edited on paper. But because it's on paper, it has very few notes, is a huge text. So, there are those limitations and we want to break free from that. But in order to break free, you create the issue of like needing more materials.

 

00:18:35:22 - 00:18:59:23

Francisco Gago

And one of the things that we're using, we are lucky that some of the texts have already been transcribed. They were transcribed in the 70s. We still have the transcriptions that we're using, but we have developed a tool to be able to annotate those texts linguistically. So lemma and part of a speech, which really helps with some other types of analysis. 

 

00:19:00:00 - 00:19:34:06

Francisco Gago

And now the goal is also to transcribe every single weakness of the general story and not just the big ones, but everything that is out there. And that needs to be done with new technologies.

 

And there are tools out there. It's called handwritten text recognition that allows you to train a model using artificial intelligence, machine learning, to then be able to transcribe the first pass, which then needs to be corrected by a human being. 

 

00:19:34:08 - 00:20:05:16

Francisco Gago

But things that used to take months or years to do can be done now in months. So it is possible to do these things because of the tools. And once you have everything digitized and translated, another of the members of the team, Javier Pueyoand I, we've been talking about things that we can do using technologies. And one of them is like, if we want to have this, we're going to do a manual translation into English.

 

00:20:05:18 - 00:20:39:18

Francisco Gago

And one of the reasons is because English is very well documented in these new tools. And from there, we can generate automatically transcriptions in any language that any possible user wants to consult the text. So we would like to have people to ask questions of the text and be able to get responses of what the text says.

 

00:20:39:19 - 00:20:50:04

Francisco Gago

That's possible. That's only possible if everything is digitized and with these new tools and using artificial intelligence. Sure. That's a big goal. We'll see if we get there, but that's the goal.

 

00:20:50:06 - 00:20:59:04

Erica Machulak

But in your mind's eye and your vision for this, can you give an example of a question that someone might ask the text and what kind of answer they might get?

 

00:20:59:06 - 00:21:43:02

Francisco Gago

I would like to know more about the animals that appear in the text. Tell me about elephants. 

 

I'm thinking, I mean, hey, a kid from elementary school. So like, oh, it would be cool to know about more of the animals that I mentioned there. And I just like not knowing where they appear or what animals are there, but just get information like, oh, there's a whole chapter about crocodiles in an isle, and then it's talking about different birds and everything.

 

And just to be able to do that. Or people that say, hey, I'm only interested in knowing what the book says about Noah and just be able to question and just do a deep dive on that specific thing. 

 

00:21:43:02 - 00:22:30:02

 

Francisco Gago

Or I just want to know, what about women?

 

How are they represented? Where do they appear? What does the text have to say about it?

 

Just without having to read all 6,000 pages, have the artificial intelligence give you the places where it happens. But that's the type of approach into them and the type of questions that you can ask. So just give me all the times that this guy is mentioned.

 

And I just want to, I mean, a scholar might say, I'm interested in knowing where Peter Comestor is mentioned. I'm just like, that would be, and what does he say about this thing? So that would be a possibility.

 

00:22:30:04 - 00:22:50:07

 

Erica Machulak

So General Historia is obviously a text that's a few centuries old. We're in a very particular moment for the humanities right now. Why do you think it's important to be doing this work right now? Who is this work for? Katie, you look like you've got an answer. 

 

00:22:50:09 - 00:23:19:16

Katie Brown

I mean, I was looking at Paco, but I do have answers.

 

So I think the main one is that the text was produced in a time of religious conflict, but uses sources across different religious traditions and really tries to understand how the different people see the world. And also, as you get to know very quickly when you're translating it, so often throughout the text, it gives various different explanations for an event. 

 

00:23:19:18 - 00:23:46:01

Katie Brown

It's like some scholars say this, other scholars say this, we'll leave you to make up your own minds, which is quite rare today.

 

So I think it's a really great model for how people have come together and how kind of curiosity has allowed for the creation of this just incredibly ambitious text. And it's something that we're then trying to replicate to a certain extent, kind of bringing together people who have different cultures, different languages, different ways of thinking, 

 

00:23:46:03 - 00:24:27:04

Katie Brown

but between us trying to find a way of approaching this text. And I think also that kind of quest for knowledge, generally, the idea that I said earlier, Alfonso el Sabio, that really what he was interested in was protecting knowledge, sharing knowledge, finding ways for information to be shared with people that when you read the text, it often says kind of, as we will say, as you've heard. It's a text that was designed to be shared among groups of people. And so that idea, again, of bringing people together. 

 

Erica Machulak

Paco Peña, anything to add?

 

00:24:27:06 - 00:25:04:09

Francisco Peña

I think that Katie explained it very well, but I wanted to add that this project is far more beyond the test itself, because the text is so big and relevant because of many reasons. It's the time, a time of the transfer of knowledge from the East to the West. So when you have a universal history that involves knowledge coming from many different sources, from many different cultures, and a time when the transfer is knowledge, it provides a lot of information that goes far more beyond the test.

 

00:25:04:11 - 00:25:29:15

Francisco Peña

Questions that still we need to solve in the humanities, like how do we know about antiquity? You know, because most of the tests that we have reconstructed antiquity or know the antiquity are medieval. And most of them, they were transmitted through Arabic sources. So in many ways, it's what the Arabs or whether Islamic culture was interested on. 

00:25:29:19 - 00:26:29:23

Francisco Peña

This is our antiquity. So to have these two links, really, because a kind of modernity will forget about this, but we need to know what we have now.

 

The way we understand antiquity is through the medieval people and through the Arabic sources. So I think that we have the possibility to answer many questions that goes beyond Spanish medieval literature and goes beyond, you know, like one specific work. So also you have to understand that many, most of the books that were written in medieval Spain, they have disappeared.

 

They have been destroyed. So when you have a work of this size that, you know, we can even, we'll be able to reconstruct how a library, you know, the different libraries that were involved in the project. And using technology, we would know far more about how books were written and how knowledge was shared.

 

00:26:30:00 - 00:27:41:03

Francisco Peña

So I think that the interesting thing about this book is not only the size of the ambition of the test, but also the kind of the liminal aspect of the book, when it was written and how many people get involved and the amount of information that can provide beyond the text itself. So, and I think that that is one of the main reasons why I sure have been interested on the project because, and something that I want to add is us, like I said, as a project team, what we are doing is new. The way we are working is new.

 

The way we have figured out how to work together is new. So I think that you're going to have an impact in imagining the humanities, working the humanities because of the way we're trying to figure it out. And I think I'm very kind of optimistic. We have a meeting this morning of the different team leaders and we are all very excited about this, about how are we going to manage to answer all these questions, to do all this work together. And one of the most exciting things is doing it. It's the process of doing it. 

 

00:27:41:50 - 00:28:07:22

Francisco Gago 

Yeah, there's, it's, I mean, the name of the book is a misnomer, General Historia, because it's more like history. There is geographical information, there is biological information, there is anthropological information. There's all kinds of things that are, it's just like, let's throw everything that we know of and make it here.

 

00:28:07:22 - 00:28:47:01

Francisco Gago 

And just to, also to understand the process that the book was written, because there's no, there's a kind of a timeline, but it's just like, oh, and here we're still talking about this, but let's go and talk about that because it happened at the same time. And in some cases it's really interesting just because it's like, so we talk about the crocodiles and suddenly you're giving us a whole chapter about the crocodiles, which comes from a different source. And it's like, so you had access to that source. And then you, we know that that source doesn't talk about another animal and therefore you don't talk. I mean, so it's just like, how it was put together. 

00:28:47:01 - 00:29:23:08

Francisco Gago 

I mean, how did the king say, I need to gather all the information, where is that information? And then, so that's for the text and just to bring people checking the book of, they don't have to be experts. They have to be curious about what it is that the 13th century worldview was in Castile at that particular time. But also the way for us to, this is more common in the sciences to work in teams, to partner with our institutions.

00:29:23:10 - 00:29:52:00

Francisco Gago 

Humanists tend to be people living individually in their ivory towers. I do my own thing. Everything happens inside my head and I can do that. And as I think we're trying to say, yes, that's okay. But your knowledge can really complement what other people know. Because I only see what I know, but somebody like, hey, I know a lot about biblical studies and this is something that happens here. That's like, oh my God, I didn't know that. 

 

00:29:52:02 - 00:30:27:24

Francisco Gago 

And I'm doing that in a way that it's different because we are living online. All our meetings include at least three different time zones. And it's a question of, and it's a learning process, how do we incorporate the new tools, things like Zones, things like Google Docs, like the platform that we have to be able to work at the same time, but not together, physically. So that's the kind of thing. 

 

00:30:27:24 - 00:30:52:23

Francisco Gago 

So it's also a way of not necessarily writing a manual of how other projects need to be run, but just to say this is a possibility. The fact that you are separated by an ocean doesn't mean that you cannot actually work together, simultaneously on the same page and chatting with each other about the change.

00:30:53:00 - 00:31:04:13

Erica Machulak

So do you have any advice, any of you, for, other scholars or practitioners around the world who are trying to make global virtual collaborations work?

 

00:31:04:15 - 00:31:06:24

Francisco Gago 

Start talking to each other.

 

00:31:07:01 - 00:31:42:21

Katie Brown

I was going to say that we're constantly learning from each other. So, for example, when we're trying to do the translation, we have to have an interpretation of the text. And sometimes we're not sure whether it should be one interpretation or another.

 

And that question sparks new ideas for the annotation team. And so really, I think being open and honest with each other, not trying to solve a problem ourselves, but knowing who all the other people are and what they're doing and who is the specific person we should go to, if we want to know more about which type of silk was used in the creation of a lute. 

 

00:31:42:21 - 00:32:08:23

Katie Brown 

So, yeah, I think kind of having some way of managing all of that as well. So we've mentioned a few times the platform. We're very lucky that we have this platform that we're using developed for the project, where the addition, annotation and translation are all happening on the same platform. We can see each other's notes. So having your central repository like that, but then also being able to reach out to each other.

 

00:32:09:00 - 00:32:32:11

Francisco Peña

I wanted to add that in my experience, there are, in the academic world, people that like to, they're like long wolves. They like to work by themselves, which is fantastic. And there are people that are more into the team playing, you know, line. And I think that we, all of us, we are team players. 

 

00:32:32:13 - 00:32:59:13

Francisco Peña

So I think that what you need to find is the other team players. Because sometimes we have crossed paths with people that were long wolves and they end up going back to being long wolves, which is amazing.

 

But this is a team playing place, you know, like we all enjoy working together. And I think that that is one of the main secrets is that we really enjoy it. And also I think that, and it's something that we learned and we keep learning, is dividing responsibilities and tasks.

 

00:32:59:15 - 00:33:22:22

Francisco Gago

Yeah, that is important because one of the things, so up to this moment, I think, because we were like, I will go to get the grant or not. Are we going to continue? How are we going to continue?

 

00:33:22:24 - 00:33:56:02

Francisco Gago

I think now teams are going to coalesce. I think teams, some teams will get bigger, some teams will get smaller. Because at the end of the day, things need to get done. And there is a question of, we have very lofty goals of all the things that we want to do. But at the same time, we have to be realistic of, you want to do this much. But at the end of the day, it's only possible to get to here. And just to realize that that might be OK. 

 

00:33:56:04 - 00:34:18:14

Francisco Gago

I mean, that's a thing because things that we would like to do, the technology might not be there. Or the effort might be too much. Or personal circumstances of team members change and you need to readjust. What you wanted to do is like, there's no way we can do this with the people that we have right now. 

 

00:34:18:14 - 00:34:39:21

Francisco Gago

So how are we going to cut back? So the idea is, I mean, in fact, we already had the team that I need, the addition. It's just like, if anything, we can do this. This is the minimum we can do. So we already have a contingency plan, a plan B of like, if we don't get this, we need to continue working and finish that. 

 

00:34:39:21 - 00:35:06:22

Francisco Gago

So there is always the [need to] be flexible and adaptable and trying to find people that are similarly minded and try to move forward the project. And then realize that not everybody can meet the same day. Not everybody can go to all the meetings. And just like, but that's the human element. That's always going to be the most complicated part.

 

00:35:06:24 - 00:35:25:09

Katie Brown

I just wanted to add to that, that it being a digital addition, it can kind of live beyond all of us as well. That it's not like it's printed and then we can't change it, that the materials will be there. And if someone comes on in the future who's really interested in something that we haven't been able to do yet, then they can keep adding to it.

 

00:35:25:11 - 00:35:39:19

Erica Machulak 

I'm hearing a lot of celebration of incremental progress and its appreciation for the ability to create different kinds of value that will morph as the team evolves. But that there's always something new you can be doing in creating a value.

 

00:35:39:21 - 00:36:01:24

Francisco Peña

I see that what Katie had just said is very important. And I thank you,  that is the fact that we know that we are not going to close all the doors. And that gives you also, we are very excited about doing the things, but we know that this is not a project that we need to close. And we put an end at the end of the movie. 

 

00:36:02:01 - 00:36:30:03

Francisco Peña

We are just the first generation. And people are going to continue it. And so that is a great feeling. It's been very good that you brought this up, Katie, because it's true, that is there. We know that we are just beginning. And they are different generations because they're different ages in our project. And we know that there are people that, in the same way that Katie is playing with the students, that the previous students help the other students too. So it's going to happen like very organically that way, no?

 

00:36:36:07 - 00:36:56:17

Erica Machulak 

Yeah, that's lovely. And I think these points you've made about the knowledge infrastructure and the training model and the ways that you are already engaging people at the very early stages of their careers, you're going to gain new skills, new tools, new relationships to think through the futures of this project. You've clearly set yourselves up for a multi-generational legacy of the scholarship.

 

00:36:56:19 - 00:37:20:02

Erica Machulak

So I want to bring this back to a question that I have a feeling maybe on the minds of many early career humanities listeners in particular. And that's that a little while ago, Katie, you talked about creating this training model that is focused on translation now, but has these expansive opportunities to open up more kinds of learning pathways. 

 

00:37:20:04 - 00:37:39:07

Erica Machulak 

And Paco Gago, you mentioned that AI has actually created more ability to do cool work. Humanists are being told all the time that AI is going to put us out of jobs. Can you tell us a little bit about the role that AI plays in the project and what the value of having humans in the work really is?

 

00:37:39:09 - 00:38:08:05

Francisco Gago 

I mean, I don't like to talk about AI for the project because, I mean, AI is a huge field. And I think people, they think about generative AI, which is a very small field of all this machine learning and natural language processing and everything. But one of the things that all these new tools, they don't replace the scholar.

 

00:38:08:07 - 00:38:45:16

Francisco Gago 

They are extensions of the scholar and tools that will allow the scholar to do more things, more in depth in a relatively shorter time. It's not an obligation to use them. So this is not like we are like preaching, like everybody has to do it this way. But it's a question of saying there are tools out there. The same thing that mathematicians use, calculate, program something to resolve an issue. They are not doing with pen and paper the whole thing of the calculation.

 

00:38:45:18 - 00:39:18:22

Francisco Gago 

This is the same thing for humanists. I mean, we need to be aware that there are tools out there that if used properly, they can be very helpful. And it's a question of thinking about how to use them, when to use them. What are the pros? What are the cons? And letting the audiences, society know that it's, yes, some of the things are really scary, but there are some others that are actually really beneficial.

 

00:39:18:24 - 00:39:49:11

Francisco Gago 

And at the same time, taking into account that these tools will not replace us. They are just going to be an extension. They are going to be something that is going to help. And I think we are at a really particular moment in time where things are changing rapidly. We don't know exactly what's going to happen. There's lots of fear about jobs being lost and everything.

 

And yeah, that's going to happen. 

 

00:39:49:11 - 00:40:10:19

Francisco Gago 

But at the same time, we shouldn't be like saying, no, this is not going to, we don't want this. It's hard to put the genie back in the bottle by now. And it's a question of how we can keep the human element inside the loop and everything else. Very vague answer.

 

00:40:10:21 - 00:40:38:05

Erica Machulak

No, I think it's a very useful answer. I think it's a very useful and hopeful answer. Maybe before I know, we're sort of closing to the end of our time. But I wanted to see if Heidi, as the early career scholar in the room who worked so deeply on this project, has any questions she wants to throw out there. Heidi, anything you want to ask?

 

00:40:38:07 - 00:41:18:12

Heidi Rennert 

Yeah, and I think it's some of the questions that maybe we get asked a lot as humanists. But you've talked so compellingly about why your project does matter for our current cultural moment. But I think a lot of scholars working on the past or old texts or niche topics, they might have trouble conceptualizing something like going after a grant like this or how to envision a project that might have some cultural relevance or contemporary relevance. Yeah, what kind of advice would you give for humanists or scholars trying to think about connections for their own work or making that kind of case?

 

00:41:18:14 - 00:41:41:09

Francisco Gago

Start small, but with big goals at the end. So I don't think we could have gone straight to the partnership grant, just because we didn't know what to do. So I think it's just a question. I think it has to grow organically. I mean, what Paco said at the beginning, it's just like they were ready to throw the towel because they couldn't see, 

 

00:41:41:11 - 00:42:03:21

Francisco Gago

you have to realize that that's a possibility, that what you want to do is not doable and you have to move on. And then the question is like, start small with very specific goals, this is what we want to do. Talk to other people, see who's out there, see who can help and then say, okay, now that we have this, what's the next natural stage? 

 

00:42:03:22 - 00:42:30:16

 

Francisco Gago

And I wouldn't shoot for the moon again, because that's always, you saw me, you end up really bad. It's like, okay, what's the next step that we can take that it's a little bit bigger? Just like that sense of progression and being ready to say, this is it, that's done. It's just like, this is as far as we go. And so it's kind of slow and reflecting at the same time.

 

00:42:30:18 - 00:42:52:15

Katie Brown

I would add something that really came through for me when I was working with you two at Hikma, thinking about the project holistically. So one thing is, what are your research questions? We all have the things that we're really passionate about, we want to learn more about, but also what is the project doing in terms of what skills are you developing through it?

 

00:42:52:17 - 00:43:26:05

Katie Brown

What connections are you making, working right from the beginning with communities who might be interested in the outputs, to think about what are the outputs that would suit them, or what do they want from this? So that co-creation. And I think those things, they really feed into each other, that we ended up having more or different research questions because of that, but also seeing our research questions in new ways, or really thinking about how do those research questions connect with different audiences?

 

00:43:26:07 - 00:43:38:03

Heidi Rennert 

Yeah, it definitely seems like the process of a grant writing itself forces you to really think critically, deeply about the relevance of your work and that progression, as you were saying.

 

00:43:38:04 - 00:44:03:19

Francisco Peña 

Okay. Yeah. I wanted to say something too, that I have seen that there are many people in the humanities that they are reluctant to ask for grants because they believe that for the work they do is not needed, and now you have access to libraries. And they are kind of like, they say, I don't want to, they reject me, that they're afraid of the rejection. 

 

00:44:03:21 - 00:44:22:14

Francisco Peña 

I think that you learn a lot from rejection. Rejection is a big teacher. In fact, the more times you are rejected, the more you learn from it. So I think that you shouldn't be afraid of that. It doesn't mean that your project is not good, but you have to learn from the experience 

 

00:44:22:16 - 00:44:40:17

Francisco Peña

Probably you are not knocking to the right door, or you are not knocking with the right rhythm. So I think that you have to try, that if you don't try, you're not going to get it. And at the same time, there is another thing. Many people do not want to ask for grants because they say that I don't need the money, really. 

 

00:44:40:17 - 00:44:46:10

Francisco Peña

But the students do. One of the main things is not only solving questions or working together, is that we are supporting students. And you are creating grants and opportunities for the students. You are opening opportunities of students going abroad and study, going to conference, being involved in projects. You know, that is the main thing. Asking for grants is not for you, it's for them, mostly. 

 

00:44:46:12 - 00:45:13:00

Francisco Peña

One of the main things is not only solving questions or working together is that we are supporting students, and you are creating grants and opportunities for the students. You are opening opportunities of students going abroad and study, going to conferences, being involved in projects. You know, that is a main thing. It is asking for grants is not for you, is for them mostly.

 

00:45:13:02 - 00:45:41:08

Francisco Peña

So you don't have to forget, and this is part of our job, part of our job is to leave behind like all this, you know, supporting them. Because right now, being a student of humanities is hard enough. So if you can add a little bit of help and hope and, you know, and nice experiences, that is a great thing that you leave behind. So I think that many big scholars, they should think that this is not just about yourself.

 

00:45:41:10 - 00:46:09:20

Erica Machulak 

That's interesting. You talked about lone wolves before, Paco Peña, but you're right, every humanities scholar, no matter how much time they're spending in their office by themselves, you have this really important relationship that's part of your profession and your legacy. Thanks for that reminder. Before we wind down, is there anything that anyone would like to add, any questions we didn't ask that you'd like to answer?

00:46:09:22 - 00:46:44:16

Francisco Peña

I wanted to add one thing that came from the meeting that we had this morning, the challenges. One of the big challenges is the administrative challenges, for example, we have problems with the visas of scholars from Northern African countries to come to Spain. And I think that probably if, I don't know what is the way to raise the voice and also ask for some support of this, but we are living in a world that is more and more full of walls and frontiers and problems in this way.

 

00:46:44:16 - 00:47:09:00

Francisco Peña

We have our mouth full of, you know, academia and universality and, you know, global, but then we close the borders and we close everything and we are kind of like, and one of the main things of this project is like to have, to listen to the East, you know, like to listen to the Western academia, to listen to what the other academias, they have to say.  

 

00:47:09:05 - 00:47:35:01

Francisco Peña

And we cannot do this job if they are not helping us in that way. We were like, one of the big things that we have to deal with is like, how can we, you know, really create a communication if they're closing the borders. Then for academics, before they used to be, it used to be easy that an academic would go to a conference coming from any country in the world, 

 

00:47:35:01 - 00:47:59:04

Francisco Peña

but it has becoming, it's becoming like a nightmare. So I just wanted to leave that there. Because sometimes we have great ideas, but then the feasibility, the reality that we are living is, and the humanities have something to do, you know, like we want to change that. So we're going to try how we deal with that. 

 

00:47:59:06 - 00:48:15:18

Francisco Peña

I already sent an email to our ambassador about that. I'm going to meet with them in, hopefully in, in sometimes in, in November or December, but we need to reach these kinds of people to see, okay, we need help. 

 

00:48:15:20 - 00:48:46:05

Erica Machulak 

It sounds, Paco Peña, if I can ask you a follow up question about this, you mentioned reaching out to the ambassador as an academic who has many fancy titles and has won this prestigious grant. Do you feel like you have levers to pull just having this kind of public success in the humanities give you more of a platform or more agency or some, some modicum of agency to be able to kind of work toward these issues? 

 

00:48:46:05 - 00:49:06:18

Erica Machulak 

I mean, on a very basic level, what I'm hearing is we're beyond the ivory tower now. Once we get into feasibility of actually making these team-based projects work, we have to confront the realities in the world and, and the ivory tower becomes seen for this myth. But you as the leader of this project, what do you see as your role in this?

 

00:49:06:20 - 00:49:16:10

Francisco Peña 

Well, I have to say that it's a good thing that I'm not the leader anymore. We are going to be three, we're three at the triumvirate. Fair enough.

 

00:49:16:12 - 00:49:43:01

Francisco Peña 

But I think that, that is precisely leaving the ivory tower. We don't, we don't want to inhabit it. Like one of the main things of this, of this project is, is to reach the, even the non-academic audience and to reach beyond, you know, the, the, the kind of the safety net that we know many times we live in and we publish on, on, on journals that no one is going to read or some, just a few people.

 

00:49:43:05 - 00:50:10:01

Francisco Peña 

We want to, we want to be, go beyond that because we, the humanities, we always have to be defending our existence. We always have to be, the science doesn't need to do that. We need to do that and it's a good thing, you know, so to be defending the relevance of the humanities, it's something that you do in, in, in Mano, but we need to be claiming and we need to, and that is why we are creative because we have to be all the time defending our existence.

 

00:50:10:03 - 00:50:30:02

Francisco Peña 

So it's kind of a, an environment of, of constantly, you know, surviving, but I think that, that precisely because of this, the humanities are more relevant than ever because we are more threatened than ever. We are more relevant than ever.

 

00:50:30:04 - 00:50:32:11

Erica Machulak

What do you mean by that?

 

00:50:32:13 - 00:50:58:12

Francisco Peña

I think that when we are threatening humanities is when, when is the time that we, we need to raise our voice and, and, and put together, and really is a moment that humanities is relevant. It will happen with every kind of like a totalitarianism or a dictatorship is that always the academia is attack because you have to kind of silence it. 

 

00:50:58:14 - 00:51:28:01

Francisco Peña

So it happens in every, you know, type of dictatorship of kind of a power when, when the power gets too noisy, the first thing to be sacked is the academia. So I need the precise moment where the academia is the most needed. So I think that we live in a moment like this, and that is why the humanities, you know, it's fantastic that we have this opportunity to, to be more visible and to reach a bigger audience and to show how important it is. 

 

00:51:28:03 - 00:52:01:08

Francisco Peña

And I, I think that is when, when things get very, from our human perspective, like as academic scholars, , that says that we can make a change. And I think that we have this opportunity and we should, you know, take advantage of it. And what I told you about, how they are closing the borders work for many academics, you know, so we, we have the message that we need to fight to change that.

 

00:52:01:10 - 00:53:00:10

Erica Machulak

Mm-hmm. And I think to bring this down and to bring this back and link it to one of the massive impacts of the project that we spoke about a bit earlier, and then Katie in particular talked about with this expanding training model, as you are bringing in so many new scholars in, translators now, people with other skill sets soon, certainly I believe and think and remember from your proposal that you're, you're training this amount of people, that's probably more people than will have supply of tenure track jobs moving forward. Right.

 

But they're building these skills where they're having this appreciation for all of the ways that the humanities trains us to think. And then they will also have these technical skills that enable them to bring that kind of thinking and these strengths, these new strengths that they have, and these networks that they have, these global networks into all of these different sectors and organizations, be that government for policymaking, be that tenure track jobs or other kinds of organizations museums, 

 

00:53:00:12 - 00:53:37:03

Erica Machulak

you know, advocacy groups. And so you really are training and expanding cohort of people to address these challenges in a more collaborative way that you yourselves are, sorry, you yourselves are modeling in the way that you, you work as a team. So there's so many different impacts to this project, but that's, that's one that I want to make sure we keep in mind as we think about how you're preparing the next generation to continue dealing with these challenges as they become more intense. So thank you for that. Paco Gago, before you need to go, anything you'd like to add?

 

00:53:37:05 - 00:54:01:08

Francisco Gago

No, I mean, I'm just excited about this. At the same time, I'm scared because I see the enormity of the work ahead. And it's one of those things is like, we need to do it. And now, now is when the rubber meets the road. Now it's what we have to actually get things going on and everything. Before it was kind of like, oh, let's do this and see what happens.

 

00:54:01:08 - 00:54:26:14

Francisco Gago

And I was like, oh my God, we actually have to do this. We said we're going to do this. So it's just a question of, I'm looking forward to the meeting in October. And then just to go back to the team we still haven't met, because it's been a crazy year for everybody in my team. And just to say, okay, let's buckle down. And this is what we're going to do.

 

00:54:26:14 - 00:54:33:09

Francisco Gago

And let's have a plan. Because right now it was kind of like, oh, we're going to. And now it's like, this is what we actually need to do.

 

00:54:33:11 - 00:54:43:12

Erica Machulak 

I know we're really looking forward to following the next steps of your work. Katie, do you want to bring us home? Any final thoughts before we wind down?

 

00:54:43:14 -  00:55:18:04

Katie Brown

I'm not sure I've got that much to add. I was thinking when you were saying about this future generation that certainly among the translators I've been working with in the last few years, like a couple of them have gone on to be teachers now, like in secondary schools, high schools. So it's like even though they're kind of leaving academia, they're really bringing the things they've learned to these new audiences. So, yeah, thank you for saying that. I think that's the thing that we really need to keep in mind, kind of keeping track of where people go, who they connect with, thinking of this much more than something that's just happening inside universities.

 

00:55:18:06 - 00:55:41:07

Erica Machulak 

Definitely. Well, thank you all for sharing a peek behind the curtain of what it's like to design this amazing collaborative project. It's been such a pleasure to work with all of you and we're so excited that you got the funding and can continue this next step. So, yeah, we're excited to share your success with our listeners.

 

00:55:41:09 - 00:55:42:12

Francisco Peña

Thank you very much. 

 

00:55:42:14 - 00:55:42:21

Katie Brown

Yeah.

 

00:55:43:00 - 00:55:44:07

Francisco Gago

Thank you for having us.

 

00:55:44:09 - 00:55:46:02

Erica Machulak 

Oh, our pleasure.

 

00:55:46:04 - 00:55:49:05

Katie Brown 

Thank you for having us. Thank you for working with us.

 

00:55:49:07 - 00:55:50:14

Francisco Gago

To delp us to be successful.

 

00:55:50:16 - 00:55:56:14

Erica Machulak 

Oh, yeah. Totally. Our pleasure. Yeah. Okay. Talk to you soon.

 

00:55:56:16 - 00:56:37:07

Erica Machulak 

We hope you have enjoyed this episode of the Hikma Collective podcast. I'm your host, Erika Machulak, author, medievalist, and founder of Hikma. This episode was managed and produced Ai Mizuta, Heidi Rennert, and Sophia van Heese. Matthew Tomkinson composed the original music you hear now. In his capacity as Hikma's 2022 artist-in-residence, you can find show notes, links, and transcripts on our website, hikma.studio slash podcast. Hikma is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking Musqueam people. We are so grateful to be here and to share this space with you. Wherever you're listening, make sure you know whose land you're on.