People

This content is being updated for 2023! We are updating our roster :-)

Faculty

Patricia Garcia

Patricia Garcia is an assistant 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

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 a Professor and Interim Dean at the University of Michigan School of Information. Her teaching and research foci are in the areas of 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 only 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 doctoral student 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 archival silences and personal recordkeeping practices, specifically in the Armenian community in metro-Detroit.  

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

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

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.