People
This is our roster for 2023-24, but we are updating our roster for the 2024 academic year! :-)
Faculty
Dallas Card
Dallas Card is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information, where he works at the intersection of machine learning, natural language processing, and data science. Prior to joining the University of Michigan, he was a postdoctoral scholar with the Stanford NLP group and Data Science Institute. He holds a PhD in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University.
Rebecca Frank
Rebecca D. Frank is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information, and is affiliated with the Einstein Center Digital Future in Berlin, Germany. Her research examines the social construction of risk in trustworthy digital repository audit and certification. She also conducts research in the areas of open data, digital preservation, digital curation, and data reuse, focusing on social and ethical barriers that limit or prevent the preservation, sharing, and reuse of digital information. She has a PhD from the University of Michigan School of Information, an MSI from the University of Michigan School of Information with a specialization in Preservation of Information, and a BA in Organizational Studies from the University of Michigan. Her work has been supported by the Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung (German Foundation for Peace Research), the Einstein Centre Digital Future, the InfraLab Berlin, the National Science Foundation (United States), and the Australian Academy of Science.
Patricia Garcia
Patricia Garcia is an associate professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. She conducts sociocultural research on race, gender, and technology – with a special interest in studying how the use of culturally responsive computing practices can increase girls’ participation in STEM activities. She is currently collaborating with public libraries in Michigan, Arizona, and California to develop a low-resource model for promoting culturally responsive computing programs in public libraries.
ORCiD: 0000-0001-7736-6076; UMSI faculty page
Libby Hemphill
Libby Hemphill is an Associate Professor at UMSI and a Research Associate Professor at the Institute for Social Research. Hemphill also directs the Social Media Archive at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Hemphill's reserach focuses on social media, civic engagement, automated moderation techniques, fan studies, political communication, digital curation and data stewardship. Personal website: http://www.libbyh.com/.
ORCiD: 0000-0002-3793-7281
Jesse Johnston
Jesse Johnston joined UMSI in 2022 as a Clinical Assistant Professor, where he teaches and researches metadata, digital preservation and curation, and LIS topics. Johnston has been active in the cultural heritage field as an administrator, civil servant, and information professional. As senior librarian for digital content at the Library of Congress, he managed policy development and training initiatives at the Library's Digital Collections Management unit established in 2018. He previously served as a senior program officer for preservation and access at the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was an archivist at the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections at the Smithsonian Center for Cultural Heritage. He has also been an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland iSchool, George Mason University, and Bowling Green State University. Johnston researches federal policy for digital records, metadata and API access to collections, and user practices in sound and video collections. Personal website: https://www.jesseajohnston.net/.
ORCiD: 0000-0003-2617-0166
Ricardo Punzalan
Ricardo Punzalan, Ph.D., previously taught at the University of the Philippines School of Library and Information Studies and the University of Maryland College of Information Studies. He has worked on a variety of archival projects in the Philippines, which include establishing the archives of a former leprosarium and curated a museum exhibit for the centennial of its founding as a segregation facility. He co-directs the ReConnect/ReCollect Project, which surveyed the Philippine Collections at the University of Michigan and initiated a program to digitally connect, return, and reparatively describe these collections with source communities. He has served on the Council of the Society of American Archivists, the organization's highest governing body, and in 2023 was named a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists. He currently directs UM's Museum Studies Program in addition to serving on the faculty of UMSI.
ORCiD: 0000-0003-1384-0845
David Wallace
David Wallace is Clinical Associate Professor at UMSI and has published and presented in a wide range of professional forums, examining: recordkeeping and accountability; archiving and the shaping of the present and the past; archival social justice; freedom of information; government secrecy; professional ethics; electronic records management; and graduate archival education. Wallace has served as lead editor and contributor to Archives, Recordkeeping & Social Justice (2020); editor of a special double issue of Archival Science on “Archives and the Ethics of Memory Construction” (2011); co-editor of Archives and the Public Good: Accountability and Records in Modern Society (2002), and served as the series technical editor for twelve volumes of the National Security Archive's The Making of U.S. Policy series (1989-1992).
Elizabeth Yakel
Elizabeth Yakel, Ph.D. is the C. Olivia Frost Professor of Information. Her teaching and research foci are digital archives and curation. Throughout her career, she has researched how users discover, analyze, and use primary sources and the repositories that hold them. Her research currently focuses on data reuse and how to make research data not simply renderable but also meaningful to those who did not originally collect it over time.
ORCiD: 0000-0002-8792-6900
PhD Students
Nazelie Doghramadjian
Nazelie Doghramadjian is a PhD candidate in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. She holds a B.A. in Humanities from Villanova University. Before starting graduate school, Nazelie worked for a variety of non-profit organizations including Data & Society Research Institute, Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, and A Better Tech NYU. Her research is currently focused on personal recordkeeping practices of Armenian women in metro-Detroit.
ORCiD: 0009-0001-2310-2080
Lavinia Dunagan
Lavinia Dunagan is a doctoral student in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. She works on machine learning and digital humanities topics and works with Dallas Card at UMSI.
Lizhou "Leo" Fan
Lizhou "Leo" Fan is a PhD candidate advised by Libby Hemphill at UMSI. Fan's research is at the nexus of data & information science, computational social science, and digital humanities. His research focuses on 1) AI-augmented Archiving & Digital/Data Curation, 2) Infometrics (Bibliometrics & Scientometrics), and 3) Anti-Racism & Pro-Equity (in Data Management & Analytics). Personal website: https://lizhouf.github.io/.
ORCid: 0000-0002-7962-9113
Tam Rayan
Tam Rayan researches how traditional archival methodology can be bridged with digital infrastructures and participatory-based methods to better serve and represent the recordkeeping needs of ethnic groups with unique intergenerational traumas, specifically those impacted by forced migration, displacement, and exile.
Alexandria Rayburn
Alexandria is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan School of Information. She studies topics related to computing in museums, specifically the maintenance of digital systems and transformative data practices of collection data. Prior to grad school Alexandria worked in cultural heritage museum collections. She has published in Science Technology and Human Values, the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) peer reviewed proceedings, and more. Her research is advised by Dr. Ricky Punzalan and Dr. Andrea Thomer. Personal site: arayburn.com
Suanmuanlian Tonsing
Suanmuanlian Tonsing is a PhD candidate researching how digitally mediated archival misrepresentations on digital platforms impact the lifeworlds of Indigenous peoples. He is a member of the indigenous Paite-Zomi tribe, part of the Zo ancestry in the highlands of northeast India. Using Indigenous methodologies, he bridges archival science and Indigenous sociology in his work.
Pelle Tracey
Pelle Tracey researches algorithms, automation, and record keeping in public sector infrastructures. Their research sits at the intersection of HCI, Media Studies, and Archival Studies. They are interested in how people interact with automated decision-making tools, and what these interactions mean for the future of work.
Campus Affiliates
Alexis Antracoli
Alexis Antracoli is the Director of the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.
Melissa Levine
Melissa Levine is Director of the Copyright Office at the University of Michigan Library and an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Michigan School of Information.
Jeremy York
Jeremy York is Assistant Director of the Library Copyright Office at the University of Michigan Libraries. York holds a PhD in Information, which he completed with a dissertation that examined what researchers seek to know about archived data to reuse them in their research. He also holds a certificate from the University of Michigan Museum Studies Program. York leverages knowledge of libraries, archives, museums, and research, to expand access to materials used in research and learning and promote campus-wide literacy in practical, historical, and cultural dimensions of copyright law.