Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone: A Unique Perspective on Interdisciplinary Team-Based Research
There came a time on a hot August day last summer—walking around the streets of Portsmouth on a bustling Saturday afternoon with a thirty-pound camera and tripod slung over my shoulder and dodging the glances of slightly puzzled onlookers—when I stopped in my tracks and thought, just for a brief moment, I thought I went to school for engineering.
When I started at UNH as an electrical engineering major, I assumed that all my research would be like the image many people have of engineering research—lab coats and clean rooms, rows of computers next to whiteboards with math equations. I’ve certainly had research experiences like that, but over the summer of 2025, I found myself working alongside a group of students all from different majors to produce a documentary on the history of the Italian community in Portsmouth, New Hampshire—and I couldn’t have been more thrilled to participate. Not only was I working on a research project entirely different from my major that aligns with my personal love of filmmaking and cinematography, but I was doing so as part of an interdisciplinary research team in a context I had never been in before.
This project, funded by an Undergraduate Research Award (URA) from the Hamel Center for Undergraduate Research, was loosely titled Filming the History of Portsmouth’s Italian “North End” Community. It was created as an extension of the spring 2025 semester research class ITAL 775, designed by Dr. Amy Boylan, during which we planned the creation of a documentary to focus on the immigration of certain communities in Italy to Portsmouth’s North End district throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We also intended to showcase the link between Italian “friendship cities” and Portsmouth caused by this immigration—notably Santarcangelo di Romagna. In addition, our documentary was designed to serve as a spiritual prequel to the 2024 documentary The Lost North End (directed by Scott Maclin), using many of the cast and crew of Maclin’s documentary as resources and interviewees.
A still from the documentary featuring interviewee Julie Gagne.
While The Lost North End focuses on how Portsmouth’s Italian North End community was split throughout the 1950s and 1960s because of urban renewal efforts that tore down many of the houses in this district, our documentary was to focus on the immigration to Portsmouth and the life that Italian immigrants made for themselves in New Hampshire. Dr. Boylan acted as the project manager and mentor for both the preparation throughout the semester and the filming over the summer with the URA grant, and I served as the documentary’s technical director, acting as cinematographer, editor, and sound designer. In addition, four other undergraduate students worked on the project over the summer: Emily Hughes (music performance/Italian studies, ’26) as the on-set director; Alexis Efstratiou (musical theater/Italian studies, ’26) as interviewer and translator; and Michael Maccini (communications, ’26) and Clarke Hawley (sociology/Italian studies, ’26) as project researchers.
Behind the scenes of Julie Gagne’s interview.
In addition, between May and July 2025, Dr. Boylan, Emily, and Alexis spent six weeks living in Italy to collect interview and location footage in the Santarcangelo di Romagna area, while I continued to collect interview and location footage in Portsmouth and Michael and Clarke continued archival research through the Portsmouth Athenaeum. During this time, each member of the group was able to share their progress through frequent email updates and regular Zoom calls, as well as brainstorm ideas for future interviews and filming locations.
Because I was the only person in the group without any Italian experience (either in the language or the Italian studies program at UNH), the opening weeks of this project far exceeded my comfort zone with research. There I was, an electrical engineering major with nearly all my prior research done in laboratories, working with other undergraduate researchers on a documentary on a subject I knew practically nothing about. Yes, I have a lot of experience with cinematography and editing from doing projects on my own time, but I have never pursued filmmaking—let alone documentary filmmaking—at a professional level. Despite this, I found myself diving deeper and deeper into the material: delving into the Portsmouth town archives to find historical photographs and talking to community members who are descendants of the North End community, all in an effort to learn about this side of New Hampshire history that is unknown to many people.
The interviews we conducted allowed me to get firsthand experience of an incredible range of personal accounts, from the childhood stories of Italian Americans growing up in Portsmouth in the twentieth century to the first impressions of Italian high school students visiting the United States for the very first time. Alongside the personal fulfillment of learning about this material firsthand, having the opportunity to work with professors and students with the same passions for filmmaking and history has allowed this project to open my mind to the vast possibilities granted by interdisciplinary undergraduate research.
Filmmaking is an inherently collaborative process. Unlike many other creative mediums, the act of making a film requires expertise in a vast array of fields that blend the artistic with the technical: acting, camera operating, sound design, editing, and costuming, just to name a few. You can record an album, paint a painting, or write a book entirely solo if you have the skill set; it is virtually impossible to make a movie entirely on your own. Thus, this research project would simply not have been possible without the collaboration of dozens of people, from the students I worked with to the interviewees who generously gave their vast personal and historical experience to the project. Even as someone who has always preferred to work solo, I know that team-based research is a fundamental skill to learn no matter the discipline, and branching out to work with people I wouldn’t normally work with led to the creation of a project that has, in many ways, defined the second half of my college career.
At this point, the project is far from over: We are continuing to conduct interviews and collect footage to edit throughout the coming year, with plans to complete the documentary by fall 2026 to be submitted for competition in the 2027 New Hampshire Film Festival. However, as the project starts to wind down, I look back and can fully understand just how important an experience this was. While I love my work in electrical engineering and aim to continue it beyond my time at UNH, cinema and the art of filmmaking are just as much a part of me. Whether that is passion, obsession, or anything in between, filmmaking is an art that I want to continue pursuing in any form I can, and as my time at UNH rapidly comes to a close and my future career paths remain uncertain, this project has been one of the most personal and eye-opening research experiences I have participated in for quite some time.
What makes UNH and the Hamel Center for Undergraduate Research so special is how experiences like this are possible: how a young engineering major with a passion for making films but practically no experience can branch out and help create a documentary in an entirely different field, all while receiving grant funding and making long-lasting professional connections. Working on a team-based research project has given me perspective in the college experience outside what I could have achieved with my major alone—working with like-minded, passionate students from a vast array of majors and experiences to achieve a final product far beyond what could be done on my lonesome. Of course, this experience is not unique to my specific set of circumstances: Maybe there is a student reading this who is majoring in accounting but wants to conduct chemistry research, or a nursing major whose heart is in graphic design. It can sometimes feel like the major you sign up for locks you into a single path, but doing research through the Hamel Center has allowed me to look beyond the confines of my syllabus into a new world of inspiration, and I truly believe this perspective might just allow you to find your own. Maybe all you need to try something different is to grab a few friends, find a professor, and send out an email—you’d be surprised just how far you can get, even with the simplest of ideas.
I would like to thank Dr. Amy Boylan for her work as the project adviser and lead professor for ITAL 775 for her invaluable help in coordinating interviews and research throughout the entire span of the project up to the present day. In addition, I would like to thank my fellow URA group members Emily Hughes, Alexis Efstratiou, Michael Maccini, and Clarke Hawley for the countless hours they have worked on the project throughout the past year. I would also like to thank the team at the Hamel Center for Undergraduate Research and Mr. Dana Hamel, who provided the funding for this project to continue throughout the summer. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family and friends who have supported my work in research in every field from the very beginning. This project would simply not be possible without you, and I am extremely grateful for each and every one of you.
Trailer for our documentary:
The Lost North End (the initial documentary):
Author and Mentor Bios
Nolan Juneau will graduate from the 鶹app in May 2026 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He is a member of the Hamel Honors and Scholars College in the interdisciplinary track, as well as a member of the UNH student branch of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Nolan also serves as a student ambassador for the Hamel Center for Undergraduate Research. Outside of academia, Nolan is the vice president of Wildcat Film Club, and his love of filmmaking and cinematography is what led him to pursuing this documentary research project. After graduation, Nolan plans to pursue a doctorate in electrical engineering relating to his research interests in analog circuit design and audio/video technology, and he plans to continue his cinematographic work at a nonprofessional level for years to come.
Amy Boylan is associate professor and chair of the Department of Classics, Humanities, and Italian Studies at the 鶹app.
Copyright © Nolan Juneau
