LEADR Director Gillian Macdonald has been named a 2026 recipient of the AI-Ready Spartans: Education Innovation Grants Challenge, a university-wide effort to expand forward-looking, innovative learning experiences across disciplines.
Her project, Critical Literacy Intensives: Week-Long Modules, focuses on equipping students with the important skills needed to navigate an increasingly AI-driven information landscape. Through week-long, hands-on modules, students will cultivate AI literacy by exploring AI-generated information, synthetic media, and responsible AI-assisted research. The non-credit modules will be available to students starting in Fall 2026.
“The idea is to create low-stakes week-long blocks that allow students to hone their skills in information, digital, and AI literacy,” said Dr. Macdonald. “We are in an important moment where skills from the historical profession are becoming increasingly crucial for navigating the world. The ability to parse information, question narratives, analyze complexity, and recognize patterns in a sea of information is essential for success in any job market.”
Dr. Macdonald actively builds cross-campus collaborations around AI and digital scholarship. She has shared her work across disciplines, including a presentation in March for the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering’s Colloquium, where she explored the question “Digital History Research and Artificial Intelligence: Buy In or Cash Out?” She also participated in MSU’s second annual AI Summit in May, contributing a flash talk that examined critical perspectives on AI adoption.
As a member of MSU’s Department of History, Dr. Macdonald is the director of the Lab for the Education and Advancement in Digital Research (LEADR) and a member of the core faculty for both the Center for European and Eurasian Studies and Digital Humanities at MSU. She is a historian of early modern Scotland and the British Atlantic World and holds a PhD in Transnational and Comparative History.