Greetings!

I am an Assistant Professor in Digital Curation at the School of Information & Library Science at UNC Chapel Hill, where I teach and conduct research on born-digital and digitized heritage artifacts.  My work considers the interpretive and epistemological contexts in which communities (humanities scholars, digital preservationists, K-12 educators, software curators) engage with digital primary sources, including legacy software, land transaction documents, archival photographs. Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches from information science, archival studies, practice theory, and social phenomenology, I examine how these materials are used in interpretive pursuits. Through this research, I aim to develop both theoretical insights and practical strategies that support the preservation and endurance of the cultural record.

NEWS AND UPDATES – 09/2025

• 🚨 NEW PUBLICATION ALERT The Stories We Can Tell: Using Digital Primary Sources in the Archival Studies Classroom with Drs. Eliscia Kinder and Elliott Kuecker in The American Archivist.
• I am honored to share that I have received the Deborah Barreau Award for Teaching Excellence. 
• This past spring, the Diving into Archives! Project held our first K-12 Educator Workshop in collaboration with the North Carolina Collection at the Durham Public Library.  Our project team will be presenting our work, “Engaging Grades 9-12 Teachers in Place-Based Archival Instruction”  on May 21st at the 41st Society of North Carolina Archivists (SNCA) Conference.
• 🚨 NEW PUBLICATION ALERT “Conceptual Approaches to Information-as-Potentiality” with Annie Chen in Information Research. Presented in March at  iConference 2025. Nominee for Best Long Paper!
• The DigiStew research project has been officially paused due to IMLS funding termination. However, the advisory board and the research team continues to meet and work on CoP milestones.

NEWS AND UPDATES – 09/2024

• I am the proud recipient of an IMLS Early Career Award for a three-year research project to investigate how born-digital stewards describe their current needs and challenges; what professionalization pathways exist; and what role, impact, and value communities of practice have in born-digital stewardship.
• I am working with a group of iSchool educators on the NSF-funded Research Data Management Education Summit (RDMES) to take place at the ASIS&T Annual Conference in 2025.
• In the September/October issue of Archival Outlook, I discuss the Hacking into History project and our work on using public records to raise awareness and empower community members.
• I received a SILS Faculty Kilgour Research Award, to study how archival outreach and instruction efforts can engage K-12 educators.  Currently, I am conducting a research study of North Carolina history and English teachers working throughout the state to understand how they use primary sources and archives in their classrooms.  In Spring 2025, I will be working with SILS Professor Elliott Kuecker and doctoral student Lyric Grimes to hold a workshop for K-12 educators at the Durham Public Library.
• Dr. Rhiannon Bettivia and I have published a draft of Provenance, a chapter for the upcoming MIT Press book Digital Preservation: A Critical Vocabulary. Feedback is welcomed and will be accepted until December 2024.
• In November 2024, I will be presenting at the Association for Computers in the Humanities Annual Conference on community-driven approaches to historic data.

NEWS AND UPDATES – 08/2023

• I am excited to be working with the Civic Switchboard Project on Civic Data Literacy for Libraries, a newly awarded IMLS grant to host regional institutes for library workers interested in serving as intermediaries between community members and civic data.
• In September, I’ll be moderating a panel at iPRES 2023 called “Community is We: Modeling Collective Action as a Framework for Digital Preservation.” The focus of our discussion is how can collective action build global capacity for digital stewardship?
• The Hacking into History Project is pleased to be joining a roundtable discussion with covenant projects from across the US at the 10th Biennial Conference of the Urban History Association: Reparations and the Right to the City.