Diego Bonilla

Keynote #1 of the 4th Annual Latin American & Caribbean Digital Humanities Symposium (LACDH) / Transborder Digital Humanities (TBDH) 2026 Symposium, held under the theme "Transfronteras: Third Spaces in Digital Humanities." Delivered as a keynote and interactive workshop on September 8, 2026, at the UTSA Downtown Campus, San Antonio, moderated by Sylvia Mendoza (University of Texas at San Antonio), in English with Spanish interpretation.

The keynote brought together Chicana feminist methodology, virtual reality, and community-engaged storytelling to explore how immersive technologies can transform digital humanities research and practice. Grounded in the ongoing VR Chicana Testimonio Research Project in Stockton, California, it examined "frameless testimonios" as a methodological intervention that challenges traditional archival, cinematic, and academic frames through immersive media and community-based research. Led by Nancy Huante-Tzintzun and Diego Bonilla, participants engaged questions of methodology, memory, archival activism, embodiment, and digital storytelling while exploring how VR can function not simply as technology, but as a Chicana and Latina research praxis. The session included discussion, immersive VR demonstrations, and collaborative reflection on the possibilities and tensions of building community-centered digital humanities methods beyond traditional academic frames.

Lightning talk presented in Session 1.3, "Teaching AI Literacy Across the Curriculum," at CEETL's Third Annual AI Symposium, "Human-Centered AI in the Classroom: Student and Faculty Voices," hosted by the Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CEETL), San Francisco State University, on May 1, 2026 (via Zoom, open to faculty and staff across the 22-campus California State University system). Abstract accepted through the symposium's call for proposals.

The presentation introduced "Principles for Cognitive and Pedagogical Sovereignty," a bilingual (English/Spanish) critical AI framework developed for higher education classrooms. Framed as a sword and a shield, the framework treats generative AI both as an instrument students can wield deliberately and as a force against which their own cognition and the instructor's pedagogical authority must be protected. It set out principles for preserving student thinking, judgment, and authorship in AI-mediated coursework, and for keeping pedagogical decisions with the instructor rather than the tool, drawing on the presenter's AI literacy work in Communication Studies at Sacramento State and in bilingual open educational resources.

Paper presented within the symposium "Reclaiming Memory, Rendering Futures: VR Chicana and Latina Testimonios and Archival Justice in Stockton, CA" (session 30.036, SIG-Latina/o/x Research Issues) at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Los Angeles, April 9, 2026. Symposium chaired by Ricky Gutierrez-Maldonado (Cosumnes River College); discussant Sylvia Mendoza (University of Texas at San Antonio). Co-authored with Miguel Ortiz Ulloa, professional cinematographer.

The paper addressed the design and production of virtual reality testimonios for public engagement, drawing on the VR Chicana Testimonio Research Project in Stockton, California. It examined how immersive media production choices (capture, spatial design, embodiment, and presentation for public audiences) shape the way Chicana and Latina testimonios are experienced, preserved, and mobilized for community archival justice. The symposium brought together four papers on testimonio, archival research, Chicana feminist futuring, student praxis, and public memory.

This presentation, delivered at the 5th International Congress and 7th Ibero-American Meeting of Audiovisual Narratives at Antenor Orrego Private University in Trujillo, Peru (November 2023), discussed cultural AI biases and the challenges of generating universal narratives while authentically representing Latin American cultures in AI-driven media production. A video recording and mind map of the presentation are available, with Spanish audio and automatic English subtitles.

This conference paper examines how knowledge graphs can be used to advance and analyze research on minority communities and their representation in media. Presented at the ACH 2023 conference, the paper demonstrates how linking scholarly works and media content via knowledge graph techniques reveals patterns of representation, identifies gaps and biases, and promotes inclusion of marginalized voices. The authors discuss the implications for digital humanities and AI literacy.

This presentation, delivered in 2020, introduced a "Scale of Narrative Involvement" (Escala de Implicación Narrativa) for virtual reality experiences, proposing a framework for measuring narrative engagement in VR cinema. Presented at the Anuario Electrónico de Estudios en Comunicación Social "Disertaciones" in Rosario, Argentina, it examined the concept of unframed cinema and its implications for immersive storytelling.

This presentation, delivered at the Quality Matters Mountain Regional Conference: Elevating Quality in Denver (2018), discussed strategies for leveraging network-based synchronous activities to enhance online learning. Bonilla explored how real-time collaboration and digital networking can foster student engagement and improve learning outcomes in online courses, offering practical recommendations for educators and instructional designers.

This presentation at the 1° Congresso Internacional Media Ecology and Image Studies – Desafios para as narrativas imagéticas (Lisbon, Portugal, 2018) explores how narrative cinema can be built and edited through programming. Bonilla discussed algorithmic editing techniques and coding practices that enable modular and interactive storytelling in film, bridging the worlds of digital cinema and software development.

This poster explored how pattern recognition influences algorithmic editing and the production of "soft cinema". It examined the role of AI-driven pattern detection in digital film narratives and how the ability to find patterns shapes generative and interactive cinema. Presented at the International Digital Humanities Conference 2018 in Mexico City, Mexico, the poster bridged digital humanities, artificial intelligence, and film studies.