CV

[Download this CV as a PDF]

Education

Yale University
  • Ph.D. in History awarded 1999, winner of the George Washington Egleston Prize
  • M.Phil. awarded 1995
  • Passed Oral Examinations with Distinction, 1994
Harvard University
  • M.T.S. awarded 1992
  • Concentration in the History of Religion in the Modern West
Princeton University
  • B.A. awarded 1990
  • Major in Religion
  • Certificate in the History of Science

Experience

2017-present Northeastern University
  • Vice Provost for Information Collaboration
  • Dean of the Library
  • Professor of History
2013-2017 Digital Public Library of America
  • Founding Executive Director
2015-2017 Northeastern University
  • Affiliate Professor of History
2013-2014 Harvard University
  • Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
2013 George Mason University
  • Professor, Department of History and Art History, and Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
2008-2013 George Mason University
  • Associate Professor, Department of History and Art History, and Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
2007 George Mason University
  • Assistant Professor, Department of History and Art History, and Director of the Center for History and New Media
2003-2007 George Mason University
  • Assistant Professor, Department of History and Art History, and Director of Research Projects at the Center for History and New Media
2001-2003 George Mason University
  • Visiting Assistant Professor and Fellow at the Center for History and New Media
1997-2001 Yale University
  • Lecturer, Department of History
  • Elected as Fellow of Branford College
1993-1996 Yale University
  • Teaching Fellow

Publications

Books

Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Co-authored with Roy Rosenzweig.

Equations from God: Pure Mathematics and Victorian Faith. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

Hacking the Academy: New Approaches to Scholarship and Teaching from Digital Humanities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013. Co-edited with Tom Scheinfeldt.

Articles and Book Chapters

Foreword to Getting the Word Out: Academic Libraries as Scholarly Publishers, edited by Maria Bonn and Mike Furlough, with Kathleen Fitzpatrick (ACRL, 2015).

“Is Google Good for History?” in Jeffrey Young and Tim McCormick, eds., Rebooting the Academy (HighWire Press, Stanford, 2012).

“The Future of Preserving the Past,” in Hilda Kean and Paul Martin, eds., The Public History Reader (Routledge, 2012).

“Digital Humanities Now” and “The Social Contract of Scholarly Publishing,” in Matthew Gold, ed., Debates in the Digital Humanities (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 319-324.

“A Conversation with Data: Prospecting Victorian Words and Ideas,” Victorian Studies, Autumn 2011, 69-77. Co-authored with Fred Gibbs.

“Digital Ephemera and the Calculus of Importance,” The New Everyday, June 2010.

“The Idols of Scholarly Publishing,” in Jerome McGann, ed., Online Humanities Scholarship: The Shape of Things to Come (Rice University Press, 2010), 311-322.

“Engaging and Creating Virtual Communities,” Proceedings of the Cultural Heritage Online Conference (Florence: Italian Ministry of Culture, 2010), 29-32.

“Digital History Interchange,” Journal of American History 95 (September 2008), 1-40. Co-authored with seven others.

“Creating Scholarly Tools and Resources for the Digital Ecosystem: Building Connections in the Zotero Project,” First Monday, August 2008.

“The Promise of Social and Semantic Computing for Historical Scholarship,” Perspectives, May 2007.

“No Computer Left Behind,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 24 February 2006, B6-8. Co-authored with Roy Rosenzweig.

“From Babel to Knowledge: Data Mining Large Digital Collections,” D-Lib Magazine 12 (March 2006).

“Web of Lies? Historical Knowledge on the Internet,” First Monday 10 (December 2005). Co-authored with Roy Rosenzweig.

“Reasoning and Belief in Victorian Mathematics,” in Martin Daunton, ed., The Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press/The British Academy, 2005), 139-158.

“The Future of Preserving the Past,” CRM: The Journal of Heritage Stewardship 2 (Summer 2005), 6-19.

“By the Book: Assessing the Place of Textbooks in U.S. Survey Courses,” Journal of American History 91 (March 2005), 1405-1415.

“History and the Second Decade of the Web,” Rethinking History 8 (June 2004), 293-301.

“Digital History: The Raw and the Cooked,” Rethinking History 8 (June 2004), 337-340.

Reviews

“Linus Pauling and the Race for DNA: A Documentary History,” Web site review, Journal of American History 94 (March 2008).

“Making the Macintosh: Technology and Culture in Silicon Valley,” Web site review, Journal of American History 89 (December 2002), 1183-1184.

Awards and Fellowships

LITA/Library Hi Tech Award for Outstanding Communication for Continuing Education in Library and Information Science, American Library Association, 2016

Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, 2013-2014

American Antiquarian Society, Elected as a Member, 2013

Avenali Fellow, Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California, Berkeley, 2013

Frederick G. Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Information Technology, American Library Association, 2011

George Mason University Faculty Fellowship, 2007-8

American Council of Learned Societies Digital Innovation Fellowship, 2006-7 (inaugural recipient)

George Washington Egleston Prize, awarded for “Symbols of Heaven, Symbols of Man: Pure Mathematics and Victorian Religion,” 1999

Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, awarded by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, 1996-1997

Pew Charitable Trusts Fellowship, 1996

Mellon Dissertation Research Fellowship, 1996

John F. Enders Grant, 1995-1996

Yale University Fellowship, 1992-1997

Harvard University Fellowship, 1990-1992

Grants

I have been responsible for over $20 million in grant funding for a wide range of large-scale projects, including:

Reckonings: A Local History Platform for the Community-Archivist, funded by the Mellon Foundation, $1,500,000, Co-Principal Investigator, 2023-25.

Community-Driven Digital Tools for Locally Managed Cultural Heritage Collections, funded by the Mellon Foundation, $505,000, Principal Investigator, 2022-2024.

Enabling Collaboration in the Decentralized Research Enterprise, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, $892,936, Principal Investigator, 2022-2024.

Building the Foundation of the Boston Research Center Through Communities, Partnerships, and Infrastructure, funded by the Mellon Foundation, $650,000, Principal Investigator, 2019.

Research Infrastructure for Digital Scholarship, National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant, $500,000, Principal Investigator, 2018-2022.

Building the Boston Research Center, funded by the Mellon Foundation, $200,000, Principal Investigator, 2018.

Improving Education through Digital Collections, funded by the Teagle Foundation, $150,000, Principal Investigator, 2016-2018.

Providing the Digital Public Library of America’s Partners with the Improved Data and Services They Need to Support our National Network, funded by the Mellon Foundation, $803,000, Principal Investigator, 2016-2018.

Fostering a New National Library Network through a Community-Based, Connected Repository System, funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services, $2,000,000, Principal Investigator, 2015-2017.

Towards Completing DPLA’s Nationwide Service Hub Network, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, $1,900,000, Principal Investigator, 2015-2017.

Towards Completing DPLA Nationwide Service Hub Network, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, $1,535,000, Principal Investigator, 2015-2017.

Technology Capacity-Building, funded by an Anonymous Donor, $250,000, Principal Investigator, 2015-2017.

Completing the Map: Extending, Streamlining, and Supporting DPLA’s National Service Hub Network, funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services, $1,000,000, Principal Investigator, 2014-2017.

Articulating Value to Achieve Sustainability, funded by the Mellon Foundation, $594,000, Principal Investigator, 2014-2016.

Getting it Right on Rights: Simplifying, Harmonizing, and Maximizing the Openness of Rights in Digital Libraries around the World, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, $292,000, Principal Investigator, 2014-2016.

Putting Digital Collections to Work in Education through Community Curation, funded by the Whiting Foundation, $96,000, Principal Investigator, 2015-2016.

DPLA’s Youth Ebook Collection, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, $125,000, Principal Investigator, 2015.

Investigating Educational Uses of Large-Scale Digital Collections, funded by the Whiting Foundation, $81,000, Principal Investigator, 2015-2016.

Local Skills, Global Impact: Training and Networking Librarians, Bringing Community Collections to the World, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, $990,000, Principal Investigator, 2013-2015.

Technology Capacity-Building, funded by an Anonymous Donor, $447,000, Principal Investigator, 2013-2015.

Digital Public Library of America Hubs Pilot, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, $1,250,000, Principal Investigator, 2012-2016.

Google Digital Humanities Research Grant, $50,000, Co-Principal Investigator, 2011-2012.

The PressForward Initiative: Creating New Modes and New Platforms for Scholarship Beyond Traditional Forms, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, $862,000, Principal Investigator, 2011-2014.

Zotero Everywhere (zotero.org), funded by the Mellon Foundation, $600,000, Principal Investigator, 2010-2012.

Digital Methods Training at Scale: Leveraging THATCamp Through a Regional System, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, $264,000, Co-Principal Investigator, 2010-2012.

Google Digital Humanities Research Grant, $50,000, Co-Principal Investigator, 2010-2011.

Using Zotero and TAPoR on the Old Bailey Proceedings: Data Mining with Criminal Intent, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, $100,000, Principal Investigator, 2010-2011.

SEASR Services: Text Mining for the Humanities, funded by the Mellon Foundation, received $75,000 as a Principal Collaborator.

Scholarship in the Age of Abundance: Enhancing Historical Research With Text-Mining and Analysis Tool, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, $340,000, Principal Investigator, 2008-2010.

Open Annotation Collaboration, funded by the Mellon Foundation, received $35,000 as a Principal Collaborator.

Zotero Commons (zotero.org), funded by the Mellon Foundation, $514,000, Lead Principal Investigator, 2008-2009.

Workshop on Digital Tools for the Humanities, funded by the National Science Foundation (with additional in-kind funding from the NEH and IMLS), $50,000, Principal Investigator, 2008.

Zotero 2.0 (zotero.org), funded by the Mellon Foundation, $890,000, Lead Principal Investigator, 2006-2008.

Zotero 1.0 (zotero.org), funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, $250,000, Co-Principal Investigator, 2006-2007.

Echo 2 (echo.gmu.edu), funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, $700,000, Co-Director, 2004-2008.

Hurricane Digital Memory Bank (hurricanearchive.org), funded by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation, $250,000, Co-Director, 2006-2008.

Preserving the Record of the Dot-Com Era, funded by the Library of Congress’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, $143,000 (part of a larger grant to the University of Maryland), Director, 2006-2008.

Scholarly software for the National Endowment for the Humanities’ EDSITEment project, funded by NEH, $150,000, Co-Director, 2005-2007.

September 11 Digital Archive (911digitalarchive.org), funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, $750,000, Co-Director, 2002-2004.

Echo: Exploring and Collecting History Online (echo.gmu.edu), funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, $720,000, Co-Director, 2001-2004.

Selected Service

Board member, Authors Alliance, 2023-present.

Strategy Advisory Board Member for Northeastern University’s NSF-funded grant “Observatory for Online Human and Platform Behavior,” 2022-2023.

Board member, Boston Library Consortium, 2017-present. Management Council of the BLC, 2019-2022.

Committee to Visit the Harvard University Library, 2016-2023.

Board member, Digital Preservation Network, 2016-2018.

Board member, Council of Library and Information Resources, 2015-present, and chair of the advisory committee for the Digital Library Federation, a program of CLIR, 2016-2019.

Board member, DuraSpace, 2015-2019.

Founder, Journal of Digital Humanities, 2012-present.

Founder, Digital Humanities Now, 2009-present.

Steering committee, CenterNet (the international coalition of digital humanities centers), 2009-2013.

Steering committee, Coalition for Networked Information, 2009-present.

Steering committee, Scholarly Communication Institute, 2007-2013.

Steering committee, HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, 2009-2013.

Visiting committee, Center for Jewish History, 2009-2013.

Program committee, American Historical Association 2010-2011 (for the 2012 annual meeting).

Convening member of the Audience and Participation workstream, Digital Public Library of America, 2011-2013.

Invited participant, Smithsonian Institution’s “Smithsonian 2.0” Project, which is reenvisioning their museums for the digital age, 2009-2010.

Editorial board, Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, 2010-present.

International advisory board, Digital Studies/Le Champ Numerique, 2010-present.

Advisory board, Long Civil Rights Movement Project, University of North Carolina Press, 2009-2011.

Advisory board, Archive, 2010-present.

Digital history advisory board, Journal of American History, 2008-2009.

Advisory board, Horizon Report, The New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, 2008, 2010.

Technology advisory board, Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

Selected Presentations and Papers Given

I regularly give talks to a wide variety of audiences on libraries, research, education, digital media and technology, history and the humanities, and related topics. A selection of my presentations and papers include:

“Research, Once Removed,” Jisc and CNI Leaders Conference, July 2021.

“Collaborative Research and the Future of Libraries,” Jisc and CNI Leaders Conference, Oxford, July 2018.

“Putting It All Together,” keynote at the Research Libraries UK conference, London, March 2018.

“The Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts: Emergent Properties of Aggregated Collections,” keynote at the Europeana Annual General Meeting, Riga, Latvia, November 2016.

“How the Digital Public Library of America is Enabling New Forms of Teaching and Learning,” Council of Independent Colleges meeting, Washington, DC, September 2016.

Keynote panelist on “National Documentary Heritage Digitization Strategies from Around the World: Catalysts for Productive Collaboration,” Canadian Library Association meeting, Ottawa, June 2016.

“Bringing Special Collections Together,” EVA Minerva Conference at Harvard, April 2015.

“Large-Scale Digital Collections as the Foundation for New Forms of Research,” Conference Humanidades Digitais em Portugal, Lisbon, October 2015.

Presentation to the National Humanities Council, National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, DC, July 2014.

Featured speaker on the President’s Program, “The Promise of Libraries Transforming Communities,” American Library Association Annual Conference, Chicago, June 2013.

“How Social Media Is Affecting Scholarly Communication, and Might Transform Scholarly Publishing,” Keynote at the Society of Scholarly Publishing annual meeting, May 2012.

Keynote, National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education annual meeting, April 2012.

“The Future of History,” The Vision Series, George Mason University, January 2012. [Video]

“Scholars and the Web: Past, Present, and Future,” keynote at the launch of the Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures, University of Virginia, November 2011.

“Defining Digital Humanities,” Columbia University, April 2011. [Video]

“The Ivory Tower and the Open Web,” keynote at the Coalition for Networked Information conference, December 2010. [Video]

“Open Access and Scholarly Values,” University of Michigan, October 2010. [Video]

“Searching for the Victorians,” keynote at the Victorians Institute Conference, University of Virginia, September 2010. [Transcript]

“The Social Life of Digital Libraries,” Arcadia Lecture, Cambridge University, April 2010. [Audio]

“Is Google Good for History?” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, San Diego, January, 2010. [C-Span Video]

“Engaging and Creating Virtual Communities,” Italian Cultural Heritage Ministry conference, Florence, December 2009.

“The Future of the Digital University,” University of Mary Washington, September 2009.

“The Last Digit of Pi,” TEDxNYED, March 2010. [Video]

“Digital Artifacts,” The Artifact in the Age of New Media conference, Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, February 2010.

“Scholars and the Everywhere Library,” The Smithsonian Institution lecture series, April 2009. [Video]

“Digital History,” Baker-Nord Humanities Center, Case Western University, November 2008.

“New Directions in Digital History,” Rutgers University, October 2008.

“Creating Scholarly Tools and Resources for the Digital Ecosystem,” keynote at the New Horizons conference, University of Virginia, May 2008.

“Zotero and Digital Tools,” WebWise conference, Miami, March 2008.

“Extending the Reach of Southern Sources,” keynote at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, March, 2008.

“The Structure and Function of Digital Libraries,” Yale University, Beinecke Library lecture series, December 2007.

“The Perfect and the Good Enough in Digital Humanities,” Stanford Humanities Center, May 4, 2007.

“Emerging Themes and Methods of Humanities Research,” Panelist, Annual meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies, Montreal, May 11, 2007.

“Can Today’s Scientific Data Be Preserved? The Specter of a ‘Digital Dark Age,'” Information Science and Technology Colloquium Series, NASA Goddard, Greenbelt, MD, April 11, 2007.

“Introduction to Zotero,” Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science, November 5-6, 2006, Rosslyn, VA, August 4, 2006.

“Possibilities and Problems of Digital History and Digital Collections,” Society of American Archivists conference, Washington, DC, August 4, 2006.

“Using New Media in Historical Study,” American Historical Association summer meeting for administrators, August 3, 2006.

“Digital Tools at the Center for History and New Media,” Managing Digital Assets: Strategic Issues for Research Libraries, conference sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries, Washington, DC, October 2005.

Speaker at the Scholarly Communications Institute, sponsored by the Council on Library and Information Resources and the Mellon Foundation, Charlottesville, VA, July 2005.

“Adding the Web to the Historian’s Research Toolkit,” The New Web of History, conference sponsored by the Dibner Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 2003.

“Making Digital Collections Available Online,” New Media Pioneers panel, National University Telecommunications Network Annual Conference, Washington, DC, June 2002.

“Victorian Mathematics,” The Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain Conference, sponsored by the British Academy and the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, Cambridge University, May 2002.

“The Historian’s Toolkit,” Coalition for Networked Information Meeting, Washington, DC, April 2002.

“Exploring and Collecting History Online: Science and Technology,” Society for the History of Technology Annual Meeting, San Jose, CA, September 2001.

“God and Mathematics in Nineteenth-Century Academia,” American Society of Church History Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, January 1999.

“Unitarianism and the ‘Ideality’ of Mathematics in the Nineteenth Century,” Pew American Religious History Conference, New Haven, CT, May 1997.