The Riddle Project

April 25, 2020

After a year as a member of The Riddle Project, a research project within the McGill Library, I just handed off my role as the developer to an oncoming research assistant. The role has introduced me to many new ideas and concepts, and has been instrumental as I’ve learned more about design and web development with a research focus. I’m excited to see where the project goes, as there is still an abundance of work to be done to continue to refine and present the material related to the project.

The project was a close study of a specific genre of riddles from the late 18th century into the 20th century, and I designed several interactive maps and stories as part of the project, as well as their website.

I conduct development work and lead the digital humanities side of The Riddle Project, an ROAAr project dedicated to transcribing, solving, and researching riddles in early manuscripts. The project is overseen by Prof. Nathalie Cooke. It takes a bit of a primer to understand exactly what The Riddle Project is about, but generally speaking it's a study of a specific genre of riddles which originated in the 19th century.

For more, I would recommend looking into the website linked above, which among other things includes several interactive maps which illuminate some of the project's findings from the massive dataset of riddles collected by the project.