“Redefining Populism Beyond the West” is a digital humanities project created to show gathered research suggesting a correlation between populism and human rights violations. Oftentimes, populism is viewed as either right-winged or left-winged. This perspective, however, is not completely correct when studying populism outside of the Western world. The project was created to define populism more in-depth to try and help draw connections between countries who exhibit characteristics of populism but might not be automatically deemed by news resources and reports as populist. Throughout eight weeks of research, four countries in Southeast Asia were chosen for study because, while some are clearly viewed as populists, other countries are not. Certain groups and minorities within these four countries have faced in the past and/or in the present, a loss of basic rights because of their governments’ decision-making. Research has suggested that the four countries who share populist characteristics have also experienced a rise in human rights violations. Evidence suggesting a correlation between populism and human rights violations has been gathered and displayed throughout this website by looking back into countries’ pasts, reading currents reports and news sources, and understanding personal stories.

The following tools were used to make this digital humanities project successful:

• WordPressTheme: Superbthemes
• TimelineJS
• StorymapJS
• Canva

About the Author

Thank you for visiting my digital humanities project, “Redefining Populism Beyond the West.” My name is Emma Poff and I am an incoming sophomore at Gettysburg College planning to declare a major in History. Ever since high school, I have enjoyed following current events and learning about how a country’s history has shaped its present. After years of debating international issues on foreign aid and human rights violations at high school Forensics Speech and Debate tournaments, I began independently researching and following the status of countries struggling with rights abuses. During my first year at Gettysburg College, I came across the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship at Musselman Library, which focuses on teaching students the importance of the Digital Humanities and exposing them to digital tools to help create their own projects for research. This fellowship was funded by The Andrew W. Mellow Foundation to give every student the opportunity to research and develop their own digital project throughout the summer. I was fortunate enough to work on this project alongside five other students who developed their own very different digital projects. (Link to their pages).

In addition to the students, I am grateful for the Digital Scholarship Committee who has helped make this project possible:

Clint Baugess, Research & Instruction Librarian

Kevin Moore, Research & Instruction Librarian

John Dettinger, Assistant Director of User Services

Amy Lucadamo, College Archivist

R.C. Miessler, Systems Librarian

*A special thanks to Kevin Moore, my librarian assistant, for answering all my questions, obtaining books I needed, searching databases, and allowing me to share my ideas and concerns over the course of eight weeks.