Instructors and Graduate Assistants
INSTRUCTORS and PRESENTERS
DIANNE DIETRICH is the Digital Projects Librarian at Cornell University Library. From 2013-2015, she was Digital Forensic Analyst and Digital Scholarship and Preservation Services Fellow working on the library’s NEH-funded project, Preservation and Access Frameworks for Digital Art Objects. She has an MSI in Library and Information Services from the University of Michigan and a BA in Mathematics from Wesleyan University.JENNIFER EMBREE is the Subject Librarian for Psychology, Biology, Comparative Literature and Latin American & Caribbean Studies at Binghamton University. She holds an MSLS from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and BAs in English and Psychology from the University of Connecticut. Her current research interests include scholarly metrics & altmetrics, digital humanities, and the preservation of cultural heritage materials during times of conflict. In her free time she enjoys biking, hiking, and baking.
AMY GAY (DHRI Co-Organizer) is originally from the local Binghamton area and is our Digital Scholarship Librarian, where she leads initiatives to increase digital scholarship services and spaces within the libraries to best serve the Binghamon University community. Before her return to Binghamton, she was part of the National Digital Stewardship Residency (NDSR) Washington D.C. program, where she worked as a Digital Projects Specialist at the U.S. Food & Drug Administration managing projects and educating researchers on skills needed to adhere to federal and institutional open access policies. She holds two Master’s degrees, one in Education from SUNY Cortland with a research focus on culturally relevant pedagogy in English Language Arts classrooms, and the other in Library and Information Science with a research focus on cultural heritage preservation during conflict. Her current research interests include digital humanities and pedagogy, primary source literacy, cultural heritage awareness, and community building through cultural heritage institutions.
KEVIN HEARD has been the Associate Director of the GIS Core Facility at Binghamton University for over 15 years. The center helps to facilitate GIS research, education, and projects across campus. His main interests are Demography, Cartographic Visualizations and Web Mapping. He received his MA in Geography from Binghamton University and his BA from SUNY Geneseo. Kevin holds the title of GISP (Geographic Information Systems Professional) which entails that he has met all the standards for ethical conduct and professional practice as established by the GIS Certification Institute. One of his current projects is using Story Maps as a research tool. This collaborative project will track neighborhood change and redevelopment that is occurring surrounding the newly built Health Sciences Campus in Johnson City, NY.
MICHAEL JACOBSON is Research Development Specialist in the Office of Strategic Research Initiatives at Binghamton University, where he helps faculty and staff develop research and grant proposals. He also helps conduct community outreach programs to apply the broader impacts of research performed at Binghamton University. In his previous position as a principal investigator and project director at Binghamton University’s Public Archaeology Facility, he helped government agencies and industry clients with cultural resource compliance and strategies for historic preservation. He established a research program supported by the National Park Service for studying and preserving New York’s Revolutionary War battlefields. Jacobson has published articles on his research on Colorado’s Ludlow Massacre as well as created digital media to present the results of his research and aid community outreach. Jacobson holds a doctorate and MA in anthropology from Binghamton University and a BA in anthropology from Fort Lewis College in Colorado.
ZOË WILKINSON SALDAÑA is the Social Science and Geospatial Data Librarian on the Research and Learning Services (RLS) team at Olin Library, Cornell University. They specialize in helping learners and researchers find & interpret data across the social sciences, and support the Digital CoLab as a workshop instructor and member of the Textual Analysis working group (TXT Group). Their techniques of choice include manipulating complex & messy datasets, data visualization, text mining & machine learning, and Python. Zoë holds a Master of Science in Information from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Macalester College. zoews.github.io
NANCY UM (DHRI Co-Organizer) is Professor of Art History at Binghamton University. Her research explores the Islamic world from the perspective of the coast, with a focus on material, visual, and built culture on the Arabian Peninsula and around the rims of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. She is the author of The Merchant Houses of Mocha: Trade and Architecture in an Indian Ocean Port (University of Washington Press, 2009) and Shipped but not Sold: Material Culture and the Social Order of Trade during Yemen's Age of Coffee (University of Hawai’i Press, 2017). She has led workshops on various topics related to digital art history, such as data visualization for humanists, approaches to digital mapping, and issues in digital publishing. http://nancyum.com
GRADUATE ASSISTANTS
LAUREN CESIRO is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at Binghamton University. She studies histories of photographies, nineteenth and twentieth century American photography, art, and visual culture, and representations of the body in photography. Her dissertation research is about communities and the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, Nan Goldin, and Sally Mann. Lauren was a Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC) Scholar from 2016-2018 and has a broad interest in digital humanities. Most recently, she was the Digital Content Manager for projects published on SCALAR by The Art Bulletin and Journal18.JASON TERCHA is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at Binghamton University. He holds a bachelor’s degree in History (with a minor in Civil War Era Studies) from Gettysburg College, a master’s degree in American Studies from The George Washington University, and a master’s degree in History from Binghamton University. His research involves the political economy and environmental history of the nineteenth century United States. He is currently working on his dissertation titled, “Networking American Landscapes: Railroads and their Social Effects on Antebellum American Landscapes and Communities.” Jason received the Top Graduate Award for his poster at the Data Science Student Poster Competition at Binghamton Research Days in April 2018. He has a broad interest in the digital humanities, but focuses his work on geographic information systems (GIS) and methods of data visualization and analysis.
