Hello and welcome! I’m Gillian Macdonald and I am the Director of LEADR (Lab for the Education and Advancement in Digital Research) at Michigan State University. We specialize in digital pedagogy and digital methodology in the classroom and research specifically in History and Anthropology. I am also interested in the juxtaposition of LLMs, aritifical intelligence, and machine learning in the advancement of historical research.

Current Roles: Director of LEADR, Assistant Professor of History (Fixed-Term), Co-Director of Cultural Heritage Informatics Fellowship

Specialties:

• Early Modern Europe
• Medieval Civilization
• Early America + the Atlantic World
• Digital History
• Ethics of AI + its use in historical research

I am an early modern European historian who specializes in the late-seventeenth century British Isles and Atlantic World. I am very interested in people, movement, and environment within the sphere of political regulation and determination (how borders function). My current book project focuses on the Irish Sea or the North Channel and its role in the late seventeenth century Revolution in Scotland. I’m also a digital historian and humanist.

• Networking the Revolution [https://networkingtherevolution.org]
• A Search for Research [https://networks.h-net.org/search-research]
• Digital Radical Historians Newsletter [https://networks.h-net.org/group/20000005]
• Digital Mark Twain Day By Day Project (MATRIX)

I have built numerous classroom projects and have several projects that I'm actively working on. You can find my current research in my repositories. I'm actively engaged in the uses of digital methods to aid learning outcomes in history and anthropology courses. At LEADR, we specialize in adding digital projects or counterparts to assignments giving students a chance to hone skills in coding, data visualization, and 3D printing among others.

• Reach me at: macdo313 [at] msu [dot] edu; gilliansmacdonald [dot] hcommons [dot] org; or [at] gilliansmac [dot] bsky [dot] social