Mandate
The Task Force (initially the Antiracism Task Force) is mandated to help ADHO devise a plan for moving forward on the 9 commitments made in the Statement on Black Lives Matter, Structural Racism, and Establishment Violence.
This mandate does not preclude hiring consultants. The process may involve compensating individuals for additional time and energy, for instance hiring a student fellow to assist with a specific initiative or activity. Possible initiatives include devising a survey of the DH community to inform the Task Force’s priorities, or organizing workshops or training that would include working group members alongside the EB and COB so there is a common frame of reference and basis for discussions going forwards. Because existing structures are implicated in the problem, the COB does not want to be overly directive, and invites the Task Force to establish its own parameters and mode of going forward, in dialogue with and relying on the ADHO Antiracism Working Group to the extent that it chooses.
The Task Force will:
- Operate with relative independence from the ADHO EB and COB, which will provide information, support, and consultation as the task force requests but will not manage its operations
- Reach beyond current ADHO members
- Decide on roles and responsibilities within the task force
- Decide on whether to adopt a new name
- Decide its scope, bearing in mind the limitations of ADHO’s own scope of operations as an international professional organization of professional organizations
- Decide its modes of engagement and reporting
- Operate in a transparent manner, reporting to the Working Group and to the ADHO community quarterly on activities
- Operate for two years, after which it should be extended, disbanded, or reshaped.
Current Members of IITF
The initial term of the Task Force will be two years, at which time, taking into account the recommendation of the Task Force, the ADHO COB will decide whether to extend its term (if Task Force members are willing) or take some other action such as converting it to a standing committee or disbanding it.
Fatima Ahmed
I’m a M.Ed candidate at Lakehead University, and a full-time grade 5&6 teacher in Kangirsuk (Quebec, Canada). I have grown up with the social justice movement and started engagement with digital humanities in 2017, when I attended the July 2021 DHSI hosted in Victoria, B.C. You can find a full CV at: https://teachercandidatemsahmed.weebly.com/cv.html
Barbara Bordalejo
I am a textual critic, editor, and digital humanist with a background in English literature. I currently work at the Humanities Innovation Lab at the Univesity of Lethbridge. Since 2014, I have worked on EDI initiatives in DH by carrying out research, writing articles, organizing conferences and workshops focusing on intersectional inclusion. I am the current chair of Global Outlook :: Digital Humanities.
Alexandra Núñez (Alex)
I am a PhD student at Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany) and part of Digital Humanities Darmstadt. I have been involved in DH projects (2014-2017) on automatic detection and classification of metaphors. From 2017 to 2019, I served as a reviewer for the ADHO Digital Humanities conferences. As to why I volunteered: Digital humanities are not an ivory tower. The more social reality is digitally mediated, the more likely it is that only certain (linguistic) narratives are represented inside and outside academia. It is time to collectively create a public awareness of the fact that, in addition to the discursively dominant calculated explicitness, fuzziness, ambiguity, and colorful diversity must also have their discursive place.
Dibyadyuti Roy (Dibya/দিব্য)
IITF Liaison to the Constituent Organizations Board
I am the current Vice-President and founding member of India’s first DH collective, the Digital Humanities Alliance for Research and Teaching Innovations (DHARTI). I lead numerous public outreach initiatives for DHARTI and have spearheaded India’s first DH Conference in 2018 (#DHAI2018), the inaugural DHARTI Twitter Conference (#DHARTITwitterConf) as well as the recently concluded #DHARTI2022 Conference on The Digital Divides: Discontents, Debates and Discussions. The goals of ADHO’s Intersectional Inclusion Task Force form the core of my own work: of deterritorializing DH beyond privileged subjectivities as well as the interconnected structural inequities of race, caste, class and gender. I have previously been a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore as well as in India’s first Masters and PhD Program in DH at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur.
From May 2022 I will be joining the University of Leeds as a Lecturer in Cultural Studies, Media Studies and Digital Humanities.
Samya Brata Roy (সাম্যব্রত)
I (he/him) am a PhD student in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Jodhpur and a HASTAC scholar (2021-23). My interests lie in and around Literary Studies, Digital Humanities, Remediation, Pedagogy and Promoting Access via Networks.
Other than this task force, my other roles include filling in as a Technical Advisory Member with Humanities Commons, an Executive Committee member with Digital Humanities Alliance for Research and Teaching Innovations, a transcriber with The Canterbury Tales Project, a Liaison with The Association for Computers and the Humanities and as a founding member of Electronic Literature India.
Ashley Sanders
I am Vice Chair of Digital Humanities at UCLA and former Chair of the ADHO Publications Committee (2016-2020). As a comparative colonial historian and digital humanist, my research engages in restoring data destroyed by colonization, as well as recovering and highlighting voices and stories of those marginalized in the past and present. My courses ask students to critically examine data and narratives for evidence of bias and to describe how power shapes both data and primary source creation/preservation and the stories told with them, and I am excited to serve on ADHO’s Intersectional Inclusion Task Force to examine and address obstacles that stand in the way of a more inclusive global DH community.
Kristen Schuster
I (they/them) joined the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London in 2016 after completing my doctoral work at the University of Missouri iSchool. I have two primary areas in my teaching and research: gender and identity narratives within the digital humanities and the interactions between data, metadata, and digital cultural heritage.
Shu Wan
Shu is currently a doctoral student in history at the University at Buffalo. He is passionate about digital humanities, pedagogy, and their potential in providing the more inclusive & interactive learning environment.
Former Member of IITF
Maurizio Lana (Spring 2022)
I teach Library and Information Science at Università del Piemonte Orientale (Italy). I have been involved in the field of digital humanities since 1989. My research interests in these last years are focused on information literacy and on the role of IA systems in the production of books. I volunteered for this group because if we as scholars have a critical stance on our subjects and draw conclusions about them, we also must have a critical stance on the functioning of our society and decide for appropriate actions.
Budget
The Task Force will have a working budget of 7,000 Euros.
These funds may be allocated for the following purposes:
- To hire consultants to provide workshops for the Task Force, and/or Working Group, COB, EB, or the general ADHO community.
- To hire consultants or students with appropriate expertise to produce, execute, and analyze surveys or interviews.
- To provide assistance in preparing reports and recommendations.
- Other purposes as determined in consultation with the Working Group.
- The Working Group will approve the allocation of funds as decided by the Task Force.
- Requests for additional funds will require approval of the ADHO COB as part of the 2023 budget.