What do you get when you cross humanities scholarship with compelling digital storytelling?

Curatescape is the brainchild of Dr. Mark Souther (left), associate professor of history at Cleveland State University, and partners Mark Tebeau (not pictured) and Erin Bell (right). Their cloud-based and open-source platform provides a unique framework for delivering location-based, multimedia content, on the Web or via mobile device. It’s tailor-made for the likes of cultural organizations, preservation groups and educational institutions.

The project debuted in 2011 with Cleveland Historical, an award-winning app that puts the history of Cleveland at your fingertips and serves as a curated tour guide. Now, 250,000 unique visitors and 15,000 downloads later, the Curatescape team has created similar apps for dozens of partners across the United States. They aren’t stopping there, either. They recently signed a deal for a project in Australia, and they’re adapting the platform for museums, too.

Curatescape was developed at CSU’s Center for Public History and Digital Humanities with funding from the University, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other external sources.

For a closer look at Dr. Souther and Curatescape, check out this installment of the CSU Office of Research’s Featured Researcher video series.