R-CADE
The Rutgers-Camden Archive of Digital Ephemera (R-CADE) is a research initiative that encourages scholars and artists to take apart, dissect, and repurpose media artifacts as they attempt to understand their historical and cultural significance. Student researchers in the R-CADE research group conduct such research throughout the academic year and then share the results of that research at the annual R-CADE Symposium. During the 2023-2024 academic year, the R-CADE group has been conducting research on Bulletin Board Systems and attempting to build its own BBSs on a Commodore 64 and an Apple IIe.
Well Played
The Well Played group conducts research on videogames and the communities surrounding them. The group is currently at work on a series of project that aims to better understand the moral and political concerns that circulate through digital recreational spaces and to explore how the people who inhabit these spaces voice, experience, and evaluate these concerns.
Digital History Team
Directed by Dr. Bayker, the Digital History team works to create public-facing projects that document state and local history. Two projects now underway are the New Jersey Slavery Records and Black Camden Oral History Project.
New Jersey Slavery Records
New Jersey Slavery Records is an open-access database that documents the history of slavery in New Jersey through archival sources, linked open data, and digital maps. We partner with archival institutions throughout the state to gather and organize historical data about individuals who lived in bondage. Researchers work to digitize, index, and transcribe a wide range of sources such as runaway ads, ship manifests, slave auction notices and bills of sale, birth certificates of enslaved children, indenture contracts, manumission (freedom) certificates, and court records documenting kidnappings and illegal slave trafficking in New Jersey.
Black Camden Oral History Project
The Black Camden Oral History Project aims to preserve the history of African American life and activism in Camden. The project records the narratives of African Americans whose stories shed light on Civil Rights and Black Power-era activism and community organizing, Black business and entrepreneurship, and Black social life and cultural institutions in the city. Student researchers are working to process audio interviews, conduct supplementary research in historical newspapers, organize scans of historical documents and photographs donated by Camden residents, and curate these items into a cohesive storytelling website and multimedia output.
AI Ethics Lab
The AI Ethics Lab is an international research initiative dedicated to examining the ethical and legal implications of artificial intelligence and analyzing its impact throughout the AI lifecycle, from design and development to deployment, use, and monitoring.
Undergraduate Capstone Projects
Ploot by Nicholas Melchiore (Fall 2025)
I am making a game about controlling a crowd of little guys called “Ploots” that have genetics. They can carry things, die, resist certain elements and fight. Each one has a name, able to be inspected and sorted within the “Pleet” (Ploot fleet). My main research question for this project is: “How to design a user experience that has control over a large quantity of actors and make each actor feel unique enough to have the user genuinely ask the question of “Which actor should I use for this situation?” All while making the crowd feel natural to command and like each one has a role to play.”
Really Frickin’ Hard RPG by Dylan Granado (Spring 2025)
THIS CHICKEN CAN SUMMON LIGHTNING AND HE IS PISSED. Prepare for a profoundly bizarre, brutal, old-school JRPG boss fight that will test your skills and patience. Inspired by classic turn-based RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, this sample boss battle pits you against this random chicken I found with godlike powers. Customize your party of four, choosing from different classes (Hero, Warrior, Mage, Thief) and elements (Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Electric) to tailor your strategy. Experiment with builds, carefully plan your moves, manage resources, and make the absolute most of each character’s strengths. Or ELSE…
This is only a taste of what’s to come in future JRPG projects, with intense, no-holds-barred combat.
https://dylbdevvin.itch.io/really-frickin-hard-rpg
Past Projects
Johnson Park: A Gallery of History Reimagined
DiSC researchers are collaborating with the Institute for The Development Of Education In the Arts (IDEA), the Childhood Studies Department, the Proof Lab, and a number of Camden community groups to build media projects that reexamine the history of Johnson Park and the Cooper Branch Library building (which now houses the Digital Commons). Specifically, this project aims to build media projects that engage with the frieze on the front of the building. That frieze, “America Receiving the Gifts of the Nation,” contains racist and demeaning imagery, and media projects will aim not to replace that imagery but to reframe it, transforming this memorial from a “read only” space to a “read/write” space. The project raises questions not only about this specific memorial but about memorials and public art more generally. By using technologies such as projection, audio, video, and print ephemera, DiSC will collaborate on a series of media projects that create new and more ethical modes of commemoration and critique. DiSC researchers are also collaborating with the department of Childhood Studies on an ethnographic study of the Johnson Park project. That ethnographic study will examine how youth media makers at IDEA are using digital media toward activist and civic ends.
Philly Untour
Untour of Philadelphia: discover lost, hidden, and forgotten landmarks. The Untour of Philadelphia is a podcast and audio walking tour that explores the city’s history through lost and forgotten historic and archaeological sites. Listen to Philadelphia’s unfolding story and imagine the shock of finding 18th century jail cells under an Old City retail shop. Visit the condo unit built on top of a 19th century cemetery and hear from the archaeologists that excavated nearly 500 graves. The Untour reveals the hidden side of Philadelphia lost to time and buried under its streets.
Voices of Immigration
Voices of Immigration is an interdisciplinary research podcast through the Digital Studies Lab at Rutgers University-Camden. Our podcast contextualized immigrant stories and touches on issues such as contemporary issues such as the Muslim Ban, DACA, and stereotypes. The goal is to investigate these broader topics and tell the stories of these issues. We are starting off by telling the stories of students throughout our campus and what their experience has been for the country they call home. It will be doing things such as bringing in guests for interviews so they can tell their stories as immigrants.