Shine Trabucco, a history PhD candidate at UH, unintentionally got started with digital humanities.

Shine's areas of focus include public history, Borderlands history, and the studies of Mexican American and Native American communities. As an undergraduate at Southwestern University, her capstone project explored the impact of resource extraction on rural communities. A professor suggested a Geographic Information System course to help present her findings.

"I started making my own maps of Texas, mapping shales, oil rigs, and fracking sites. Then, I was overlaying the oral histories on top of those so people could see that there's a relationship." Shine then began her master's in public history at Saint Mary's University. "It felt like fate," she said. "My advisor was working on something similar and pointed out, 'Oh hey, you already know how to do this.' I was introduced to this as a whole field I didn't even realize I was a part of. So I came to the University of Houston because of the funding that the humanities was getting."

"I hosted the first student-oriented event for the DH at UH series," she said. "I brought in a colleague who discussed how digital humanities helped him document and archive Black history in New England." Shine encouraged conversations about the unrecognized labor of students in digital humanities, saying, "Most of the core facility is student labor, but the faces and recognition go to the faculty. They achieve so much because the students are so bright."

Shine is well-known to many undergraduate students from the DH Plan Development and Project Development micro-credentialing program, which left a lasting impact on her as well. She shared, "The first time I taught credentialing alone, there was a call for applications for digital public history. Seeing my students apply and get accepted made me feel like I knew what I was doing. I don't take credit for their work, but it did make me feel good that they were interested enough in what I was presenting to take it further. Ultimately, I just want my students to be successful in whatever way they see success."

Shine participated in several projects through the Digital Humanities Core Facility (DHCF). She started as a research assistant and later taught in the micro-credentialing program. Her work involved managing research and contributing to projects on various topics, including text analysis and grant training.