Who we are
Heather Blackmore is a PhD student at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and a Mellon Digital Research and Scholarly Communication Fellow. Her research interests include documentary media studies, the cultural histories of technology, the relationships of emotion and touch to media and material culture, the history of animation, and studies of festivals and curatorship.
David Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in Information Studies at UCLA, focusing on information design, new media and digital humanities, and race, ethnicity and gender. He is also a Mellon Digital Research and Scholarly Communication Fellow. Drawing from case studies in both digital humanities and community-based arts organizations, his dissertation addresses the cultural politics of representation in digital archives and data, exploring their epistemic conditions for understanding minoritarian identity formations in the U.S. in the broader context of the current information economy and digital culture. Prior to UCLA, he has worked with various cultural institutions as archivist and design consultant, and received his MA in English from NYU.
Ulia Popova (Gosart) holds PhD (UCLA, Information Studies) and MLS (Southern Conn. State University) and is a Mellon Digital Research and Scholarly Communication Fellow. Her research focuses on the protection of indigenous peoples rights to culture and political participation.
Beatrice Schuster has graduated from Scripps College completing a self-designed major in Creative Writing for New Media and a minor in Media Studies. She has worked with Professor Wernimont on Digital Humanities grants for the past two years. In Spring 2013, she received a Mellon Undergraduate Research grant to continue work encoding plague documents in XML with Professor Wernimont. She is currently finishing work on a Mellon Pre-Thesis grant to begin work on her senior thesis about narrative in role-playing video games. She is a Mellon Undergraduate Research Fellow on the Performing Archives project. She is particularly interested in the way new media influence contemporary storytelling.
Amy Borsuk has graduated from Scripps College with an B.A. in English Literature. She previously worked at Ms. Magazine where she interned as a copy-editor and began writing for the Ms. blog. She has also previously worked with Professor Wernimont in Digital Humanities as an undergraduate research assistant for the "Counting the Dead" project, using TEI XML coding to explore the semiotics of numbers in 17th century plague bills. Following graduation, she plans to intern with Los Angeles theatre companies in development and dramaturgy before pursuing an MA in dramaturgy. She is a Mellon Undergraduate Research Fellow for the Performing Archives project. She is interested in using new media's influence on research and storytelling techniqes, particularly within theatre.
