ACH 2025 Keynotes

Speakers

Rahul Bhargava

Rahul Bhargava (he/him/his) is an researcher, educator, designer, and artist working on creative data storytelling and computational journalism in support of social justice and community empowerment. He creates data murals and theatre with communities, award-winning museum exhibits, AI-powered civic technologies with CSOs, and delivers hands-on workshops and keynote talks across the globe. Rahul’s first book, “Community Data: Creative Approaches to Empowering People with Information”, is now available from Oxford University Press. He leads the Data Culture Group at Northeastern University as an Assistant Professor in Journalism and Art + Design.

Keynote Title and Abstract Civic Jugaad: Reclaiming Digital Innovation for Social Good” Many scholars and practitioners in the digital humanities (including me) are struggling to adapt their work to respond to crises around them. Building on the concept of jugaad—creative community problem-solving across the Indian sub-continent—I will explore projects and methods that inspire me to reclaim digital innovation for justice in community settings. I offer the under-construction concept of civic jugaad to think out loud about how imaginative practices can be added to trends of AI for good, data storytelling, and public interest technology in order to align work with the needs of threatened communities. Through examples I’ll introduce ways to use whatever materials you have at hand for practices that contest what is “good” in AI applications, tell more impactful data stories, create playful and healing civic technology, and more.

Lynda Kellam

Dr. Lynda Kellam is one of the founding organizers of the Data Rescue Project and the Snyder-Granader Director of Research Data & Digital Scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. She is the co-author of Numeric Data Services and Sources for the General Reference Librarian (2011), co-editor of Databrarianship: The Academic Data Librarian in Theory and Practice (2016), and has presented extensively on data services, data management, and FAIR Guidelines. She is the current Secretary of IASSIST, an international data professional organization, and has served in multiple leadership positions in ALA, ACRL, and GODORT. She holds an MLIS, an MA in Political Science, and a PhD in American History.

Keynote Title and Abstract Keep Calm; Float On: Data Rescue and You Concern for the continued access to and preservation of public federal data drove the development of the Data Rescue Project (DRP), a grassroots, community-led effort, in February 2025. This presentation will focus on efforts in the library community and beyond to rescue federal public data at risk of loss or deletion. It will review the development of the DRP and its current initiatives and consider future challenges for public data infrastructure in the United States.

“Funding DH: Past, Present, and Future”

A special session with colleagues from the National Endowment for the Humanities, led by Hannah Alpert-Abrams.

This one-hour roundtable discussion will feature people formerly or currently affiliated with federal funding agencies, talking about the role that these agencies have played in shaping the field. The panel will open with brief presentations on the history of federal funding for digital humanities and current events in the federal government. We will then have a moderated conversation in which we will talk about where NEH and IMLS fit in the DH ecosystem, and what may be possible moving forward.

Hannah Alpert-Abrams Hannah Alpert-Abrams is a writer, researcher, and grantmaker. From 2019-2025, Hannah worked in the Offices of Data and Evaluation and Digital Humanities at NEH. Prior to NEH, Hannah was a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University and the University of Texas. Hannah has written broadly about copying technologies, book history, archival studies, and labor, and is based in Knoxville, TN.

Meaghan Brown Meaghan Brown is a grantmaker, editor, and researcher. She worked at the Division of Research Programs at the National Endowment of the Humanities from 2019 to 2025. She has published on textual encoding, digital interfaces for early modern plays, early modern manuscripts, printed addresses to readers, and other such intersections of readers and textual artefacts. All opinions are her own.

Jacquelyn Clements Jacquelyn Clements is an historian, editor, and grantmaker. She specializes in provenance research, Mediterranean archaeology, and digital humanities research. Prior to NEH, she worked at the Project for the Study of Collecting and Provenance at the Getty Research and was a CLIR/Mellon postdoctoral fellow in data curation for visual studies at the University of Toronto. She worked at the Division of Preservation and Access at the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2020 to 2025. All opinions are her own.

Bethany Farrell Bethany Farrell is an art historian, digital humanist, and grantmaker. She specializes in early modern and technical art history, archival research, and digital humanities, especially engaging technology to explore the archive. Before joining NEH, she worked and was a fellow at American Philosophical Society Library & Museum. From 2023 to 2025, Bethany was a staff member in NEH’s Office of Digital Humanities. All opinions are her own.