The Studio // Amaranth

Amaranth is a collaborative studio that brings the humanities and technology together. It’s a place where you come to learn, experiment, fail, and make things, even when they aren’t what you had in mind. We work alongside you as we explore AI research workflows, design decisions, and technical challenges. When you leave, your comfort should be a little higher and your reach a little further than when you arrived.

Human-centered technology

We don’t pretend to have it figured out. We’re humanists who work with these tools constantly, and we’re learning alongside you where they help and where they can get in the way. That experience and honesty is what we’re proud to bring to the table.

Amaranth’s work starts with people, sources, communities, and questions, not tools. That matters most with AI. We are interested in AI when it helps humanists see across larger collections, structure messy materials, compare images, or make public projects possible sooner. We are not interested in AI as a substitute for interpretation, accountability, or care.

Human-centered AI means keeping the researcher close to the evidence: prompts that can be inspected, outputs that can be checked, sources that remain traceable, and communities that are treated as partners rather than data. The point is not to automate humanities work. The point is to make more of the work visible, discussable, and responsible.

Our interests and focus

Developing AI-assisted research workflows that expand what humanists can study and ask without sacrificing rigor and nuance
Interdisciplinary collaborations across the humanities and social sciences
Community-engaged projects that connect scholarly work to broader audiences and partners
Building student capability and confidence through real projects with real stakes

Amaranth at UNM

Amaranth’s mission is deliberately aligned with UNM’s priorities and 2040 vision: experiential learning through projects students actually care about, university research connected to community partners, digital literacy across tools and workflows, and humanities voices in the AI conversations already happening across campus. New Mexico makes this feel less like a strategic plan and more like an obvious priority.

What’s with the name?

The name comes from the Greek amarantos: unfading. There’s a deliberate irony in naming a digital humanities studio after a symbol of permanence, given how quickly technology becomes obsolete. We embrace the contradiction—and the richer story of a plant that has meant sacred grain, colonial threat, superfood, and superweed, depending on who’s growing it and why. Read the full story →