The Caribbean Digital conference (TCD) is an international event hosted annually at locations in the United States and the Caribbean since 2014. Alternating between events convened via an open invitation and smaller events convened by invitation, TCD has created a singular and consistent space of exchange for Caribbeanist digital scholars, consisting of traditional panels, roundtable conversations, skills-building workshops, and project show-and-tells. The work done in preparation for this gathering and produced in its wake has led to the publication (in archipelagos journal alone) of more than thirty peer-reviewed scholarly articles and digital projects and to the development of several ongoing digital artifacts, including a collectively generated bibliography, a collective translation, a keywords project, and a repository of the field of Caribbean digital studies.

Historically, TCD has been financed ad-hoc through a combination of small institutional partners and small research grants to remain free of charge to presenters and attendees. During the Mellon grant period, we will host two open-call conferences at Barnard College and the University of Miami and two invited-speaker symposia at the University of Puerto Rico and Dominica State College, respectively.

The CDSC will cover stipends, travel, and accommodation costs for the presenters and keynote speakers who participate at TCD. We will also offer travel grants to graduate student attendees from under-resourced institutions who demonstrate an interest in Caribbean digital scholarship.

As a vehicle for discussing and presenting work emerging from the various summer institutes, micro-grants, and academic programs, TCD will foreground the cross-institutional ecosystems of scholars, artists, activists, and students.

TCD digital artist’s virtual residency

The CDSC will support an artist annually for a six-month digital artist's residency tied to TCD events. We recognize that creative arts emerging from the Caribbean and its diasporas present a form of knowledge production that raises the same questions and concerns as those academics engage, offering alternative modes of expression to audiences that extend well beyond the academy. Increasingly, artists' residencies are conceived of as immersing an artist in ideas, values, practices, methods, and a social context to which they then respond creatively.

In partnership with Alice Yard, a celebrated contemporary art collective based since 2006 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, the TCD digital residencies will include curatorial guidance and mentorship from Trinidadian artist Christopher Cozier, to produce born-digital art to be presented annually at TCD. Each residency will also include two virtual studio visits by professional critics and curators and the commissioning of a critical text for publication in archipelagos journal. Artists-in-residence will present their digital projects at the annual TCD conference, with travel and accommodation costs provided.