ARC sponsors and coordinates an annual speaker series titled Data, Archives, and Information in Society, or DAIS. Each year we invite speakers whose work advances understanding in topics related to archives, digital curation, and data, as it is understood and critiqued within the context of information environments and social concerns. 

Jarrett Martin Drake is an educator, ethnographer and organizer who is currently a PhD candidate in anthropology at Harvard University. Prior to pursuing a doctoral degree, Drake obtained a BA in history and an MS in information science with a concentration in archives from the University of Michigan School of Information, during and after which he worked as an archivist and librarian in multiple institutional and non-institutional contexts, most meaningfully with A People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland. Drake was born and raised in Gary, Indiana, where he graduated from The Benjamin Banneker Achievement Center.

Emily Drabinski is associate professor in the Queens (NY) College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. She serves as 2023-2024 president of the American Library Association. 

Beth Patin is an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. Her research, teaching, and service all center information justice and equity, by investigating epistemicide and epistemic justice, community resilience and crisis informatics and cultural responsiveness in an effort to work towards a more just community. Currently, she is working on projects about epistemicide (the silencing, killing, or devaluing of knowledge systems) and digital humanities and the Civil Rights Movement. 

André Odendaal is the vice-chancellor’s writer-in-residence and an honorary professor in history and heritage studies at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). He received his first degrees from Stellenbosch University and his PhD from Cambridge University. Thereafter, he spent 13 years at the University of the Western Cape, where he started and directed the pioneering Mayibuye Center for History and Culture in South Africa, with its large multi-media archive on apartheid and the liberation struggle. Here he launched the Mayibuye History and Literature Series and, as joint series editor, oversaw the publication of 85 books on South African history (including the re-issuing of many titles of the previously banned International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa). 

Anthea Josias, PhD, is a lecturer at the University of Michigan School of Information, where she teaches courses in preservation, program assessment and data science. Formerly, she was the archives and collections manager at the Mayibuye Center and the Robben Island Museum. 

Diana E. Marsh is an assistant professor of archives and digital curation at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies (iSchool) who investigates how heritage institutions communicate with the public and communities. Her current research focuses on improving discovery and access to colonially-held archives for Native American and Indigenous communities. Previously, she completed her PhD in anthropology (museum anthropology) at the University of British Columbia, an MPhil in social anthropology with a museums and heritage focus at the University of Cambridge in 2010, and a BFA in visual arts and photography at the Mason Gross School of the Arts of Rutgers University in 2009. Her recent work has appeared in JASIST, The American Archivist, Archival Science, and Archivaria, and her book, From Extinct Monsters to Deep Time: Conflict, Compromise, and the Making of Smithsonian’s Fossil Halls was released in paperback with Berghahn Books in fall 2022. 

Gracen Brilmyer (they/them) is a Disabled researcher working at the intersection of feminist disability studies and archival studies. Their work investigates the erasure of disabled people in archives primarily within the history of natural history museums and colonial histories as well as how disabled people experience themselves in archival material. They are currently assistant professor at McGill University and director of the Disability Archives Lab. Find a bibliography for Dr. Brilmyer's seminar talk at http://disabilityarchiveslab.com/crippingabsence.