Author Archives: Madison Watkins

GDPW Group Update | Week 14

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APRIL 30TH

This week in class, we had the pleasure of hearing from guest lecturer Stephen Klein, who walked us through key concepts in web archiving. His insight helped us better understand the long-term value of preserving digital history, especially relevant to our project as we are finalizing everything and thinking about the future of GDPW.

Project Progress:
Madison finalized our data visualizations with support from Elijah, and they have now been uploaded to our WordPress site. Cathy and Martin worked on refining and updating our final presentation materials, ensuring the deck is clean, coherent, and reflective of our group’s progress, objectives, and each member’s contributions.

What’s Next:
Martin explained that future contributions to our website will include short narratives celebrating a specific community’s history and presence in professional wrestling.
Possible themes include:
– Black wrestlers and Black History Month
– Hispanic/Latinx Heritage
– Japan and Asia’s broader influence on wrestling
– LGBTQ+ representation
– Women’s History Month

These community spotlights will help us highlight professional wrestling as a space where identity, performance, and representation intersect.

Elijah is working on integrating Zotero into the site to improve how we display and organize our references and sources. He is also constantly refining and updating the website, to help bring it to culmination. Madison will provide front-end/UX support, to help polish the website. We’re also beginning to think about our personal final reflections. For our Final/White group Paper, everyone has been assigned three pages to do. Martin communicated that we will discuss the group paper more thoroughly after next week’s presentation. He is now preparing to individually lead an early run of our presentation on Monday.

Check out our progress so far on the official project website: https://gdprowres.com/

Madison Watkins Bio & Contribution Statement

Madison Watkins (she/they) is the Lead Data Visualization, UX Design, and Front-End Support for Gender Disparity in Professional Wrestling. Originally from Southern California, they moved to New York City to further pursue their studies and are currently a first-year M.A. student in the Digital Humanities program at The Graduate Center, CUNY. They hold a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from UCLA, Class of 2023, with a specialization in computing and a minor in Film, Television, and Digital Media.

Watkins’ research interests center on mapping patterns of inequity and visualizing disparities in areas like education, food access, and public health. For this project, they are responsible for designing and implementing interactive data visualizations, refining the user experience, and supporting the front-end development of the website. Their goal is to use data and design to create engaging, accessible narratives that highlight gender disparities in professional wrestling, making complex patterns more transparent and compelling for a wider audience.

Skillsets | Watkins, M.

HELLO EVERYONE 👋🏽

I had the great opportunity to meet most of you last semester in our Fall 2024 – Intro to DH course. For those who I have not had the pleasure of meeting yet, my is Madison, and I am a student in the Digital Humanities MA Program, here at the Graduate Center. In 2023, I graduated from UCLA, receiving my Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology with a specialization in computing, and a minor in Film, Television, and Digital Media.

I am particularly interested in creating intuitive, engaging experiences that blend data and design to tell powerful, meaningful stories. My work focuses on uncovering patterns of inequity and visualizing disparities in education, food health, public space, accessibility, etc. I am committed to designing solutions that are not only visually compelling but also deeply impactful and functional—fostering understanding, empathy, and change.

ROLES

Project Management | Skill 3/5 - Interest 1/5 
- Gained project management experience in previous undergraduate projects

Data Visualization + Mapping* | Skill 4/5 - Interest 4.5/5 
- Extensive previous experience creating appealing visualizations to display large and complex data
- Want to learn how to create more creative, dynamic, and interactive data visualizations
- Comfortable with a lead Data Visualization role 
- *Not interested in mapping for this course at this time

Developer | Skill 2.5/5 - Interest 4/5 
- Front-end experience
- Want to improve on both front- and back-end coding skills in JavaScript
- Very comfortable using website development software systems such as WordPress 

Social Media/Outreach* | Skill 4/5 - Interest 5/5 
- Extensive previous experience with social media marketing and management 
- Very comfortable designing flyers, posters, and other materials for all outreach purposes
- *Not interested in posting on social media at this time

UX/UI Design | Skill 3/5 - Interest 3/5 
- Held support/team member UX & design roles within undergraduate projects, previous work assignments, and design competitions
- Familiar with the UX Design Process

Research/Documentation | Skill 3/5 - Interest 2.5/5 
- Experience with journalism and photography 
- Moderately familiar with academic research
- Holds a Social and Behavioral Responsible Conduct of Research certificate, issued in 01/2023 by the CITI Program. 

Softwares & Applications ~

Proficient - Canva, Qualtrics, Airtable, WordPress, Instagram/Youtube/Twitter

Intermediate (and I want to improve) - Tableau, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, GIS, Adobe Creative Suite, SPSS, Excel

Novice - MATLAB, R, Python, C++, Figma

Overall, I feel very eager to take on any of these roles and learn more about the process, tools, and practice of the Digital Humanities.