Interested in the mentorship program at AERI 2022? Please use the signup form below to share your info with conference organizers who will work to match you with a member of the community who has volunteered to serve as a mentor this year.
Below please find a list of the mentors:
| Contact Name | Biography | Research Interests | Areas of Mentorship |
| Itza Carbajal | Itza A. Carbajal is a Ph.D student at the University of Washington Information School focusing her research on children and their records. Previously, she worked as the Latin American Metadata Librarian at LLILAS Benson after having received a Master of Science in Information Studies with a focus on archival management and digital records at the University of Texas at Austin School of Information. Before that, she obtained a dual-degree Bachelor of Arts in History and English with a concentration on creative writing and legal studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. | Knowing firsthand the affective value of records, I am committed to pursuing doctoral research that will engender ways for people, and in particular children, to grapple with and learn from some of their most painful memories. My research seeks ways to use archives as a mechanism to confront these stories in order for children to recognize and utilize their memories for healing, personal development, and building community resilience. | Navigating academia, PhD Admissions |
| Ed Benoit | Edward Benoit, III is Associate Director and Associate Professor in the School of Library & Information Science at Louisiana State University. He is the coordinator of the archival studies and cultural heritage resource management programs. He received an MA in History, MLIS and PhD in Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Dr. Benoit is the founder of the Virtual Footlocker Project, and IMLS funded project supporting veteran personal military record preservation. | Participatory and community archives; non-traditional archival materials; climate change; archival education | Navigating academia,Grant writing,Professional development,Job search / market |
| Michelle Caswell | Michelle Caswell, PhD, (she/her) is an Associate Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Caswell directs a team of students at UCLA’s Community Archives Lab (https://communityarchiveslab.ucla.edu/), which explores the ways that independent, identity-based memory organizations document, shape, and provide access to the histories of minoritized communities, with a particular emphasis on understanding their affective, political, and artistic impact. In 2008, together with Samip Mallick, Caswell co-founded the South Asian American Digital Archive (http://www.saada.org). She is the author of two books: Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work (Routledge, 2021) and Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory and the Photographic Record in Cambodia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014). Her work has defined and refined core concepts in critical archival studies, including archival imaginaries, community archives, imagined records, radical empathy, survivor-centered archives, and most recently, feminist standpoint appraisal. | community archives, feminist approaches to archives, liberatory memory work, critical theory | Publication,Navigating academia,Grant writing,Professional development,Job search / market |
| Jamie A. Lee | Jamie A. Lee is Associate Professor, School of Information, University of Arizona, USA. Their research and teaching attend to Critical Archival Studies, multimodal media, storytelling, and bodies. Lee’s book, Producing the Archival Body, (Routledge, 2021) interrogates how power is deployed in archival contexts to build critical understandings of how archives shape human subjectivities. For more on their research: www.thestorytellinglab.io | critical archival studies; community archives; body; embodiment; storytelling; multimodal productions; media; queer theory; lgbtq studies; climate justice; borderlands contexts | |
| Jeannette Bastian | I am a Professor Emerita at Simmons University where I directed their Archives Management concentration for 20 years. I retired from teaching in June 2019 and am currently an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Information at the University of the West Indies (Mona, Jamaica) where I supervise their doctoral students. I am widely published in the archival literature and my books include, Owning Memory, How a Caribbean Community Lost its Archives and found its History (2003); Decolonizing the Caribbean Record, An Archives Reader, edited with John Aarons and Stanley Griffin (2018); Community Archives, Community Spaces, edited with Andrew Flinn (2020). I have been involved with AERI since its beginnings and have spent many years mentoring students. Born in the UK and now for many years a U.S. citizen, I am white, cisgender, and Jewish. I currently live in the U.S. Virgin Islands. | Although I have had a general research interest in many theoretical aspects of archives over my years as an archival educator, my current focus is on decolonization, collective memory and oral traditions. I am currently completing a book tentatively titled “Archiving Cultures” that explores the fusion of traditional archival practice with cultural expressions. | Publication,Professional development,Navigating academia |
| Dr Charles J. Farrugia | DR CHARLES J. FARRUGIA is Malta’s National Archivist. A Commonwealth Scholar, Dr Farrugia holds degrees in history and records management and a doctorate in archives management from the University of Aberystwyth. For the last thirty years Farrugia worked at the National Archives of Malta and contributed towards its establishment and the professionalisation of this organisation. He introduced archives and records management studies at the University of Malta in 2005 and was host to the CITRA archives conference in Malta in 2009. Dr Farrugia has published and lectured about archives locally and abroad. He has served as Chairperson of the Association of Commonwealth Archivists and Records Managers and is also the Chairperson of the European Branch of the International Council on Archives (EURBICA). | My main research interest focus on the management of national archives, archival tertiary education and the capturing of memory through oral history. At the moment I am involved in projects documenting the pioneers in Malta’s library and archives history and also editor of a series of monographs published by the National Archives of Malta. | Navigating academia,Professional development, internships in national archives |
| Jenny Bunn | Worked as an archivist at a number of institutions (e.g. The Royal Bank of Scotland, Victoria and Albert Museum, Glasgow University Archives) 1995-2007; Completed a PhD and acted as a Lecturer on and Programme Director for the MA in Archives and Records Management at University College London 2007-2020; Currently Head of Archives Research at The National Archives (UK). | Individual research interests revolve around the history and future of the impact of technology on archival practice (most recent work concerns the use of Artificial Intelligence). Also interested in archival thinking in respect of cataloguing/archival description in particular. More generally I am interested in the relationship between research and practice and on how to develop the collective and critical intelligence of all those involved in recordkeeping. | Professional development,Navigating academia |
| Jamila Ghaddar | Dr. Jamila Ghaddar is an Assistant Professor at Dalhousie University’s School of Information Management. She is a SSHRC-funded Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Manitoba, where she works with Raymond Frogner at the National Center for Truth & Reconciliation and Dr. Greg Bak at the History Dept.’s Archival MA Program. She holds a PhD and Master of Information from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. Her work has appeared in the premier academic journals Archival Science; Library Quarterly; and Archivaria. Recently, she completed a chapter for the forthcoming book, Disputed archives and cultural heritage, Volume II. These interventions form part of a larger intellectual project that interrogates the complex dynamics between race, colonialism, gender, history, memory, citizenship, nationalism and archives in national spaces and international arenas like Canada, France, the U.S., Algeria, Lebanon, UNESCO and the Arab League. Ghaddar has been awarded a Senior Doctoral Fellowship with UofT’s Equity Dept., the ALA’s Eugene Garfield Dissertation Fellowship, and a multiyear Doctoral Fellowship from Canada’s Social Science & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). | Antiracism; decolonization; antiracist feminist traditions; ICT in the Global South; archives in the Arab world; displaced archives; settler colonialism; national archival development; social movements and media in the Arab world; digital heritage; history of archival studies; international law and norms; the United Nations; cultural heritage protection; library classification and subject headings; arrangement and description in archives; international archival standardization and governance | Navigating academia,Publication, |
| Johnathan Thayer | Johnathan Thayer is Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at Queens College in New York City where he teaches courses in archival studies, public history, and digital history. He has an MLS from Queens College and a PhD in History from the CUNY Graduate Center. Thayer worked for over a decade as Archivist at the Seamen’s Church Institute and is currently the Coordinator of the Certificate in Archives and Preservation of Cultural Heritage and Advisor for the MLS/MA Dual Degree in LIS and History. He has taught the Internship course at Queens College for the past six years and has co-developed a archives fellowship program with the department of Special Collections and Archives at Queens College Libraries. | Archival education, local history, public history, oral history, digital history, maritime history, urban history. I am less focused on navigating academia than I am dedicated to the professional development of MLS students. | Job search / market,Professional development |