ACH 2024 Keynote

Local and Global Digital Social Justice

A conversation with K.J. Rawson and T-Kay Sangwand

Headshot of a white-presenting individual with short hair and facial hair, wearing a pink and blue plaid shirt under a winter coat. They are smiling into the camera
03/03/22 – BOSTON, MA. – K.J. Rawson, Associate Professor of English and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, poses for a portrait on March 3, 2022. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

K.J. Rawson, Professor of English and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Director of the Humanities Center, Northeastern University

K.J. Rawson works at the intersections of the Digital Humanities and Rhetoric, LGBTQ+, and Feminist Studies. Focusing on archives as key sites of cultural power, he studies the rhetorical work of queer and transgender archival collections in brick-and-mortar and digital spaces. Rawson is founder and director of the Digital Transgender Archive, an award-winning collection of trans-related historical materials, and he chairs the editorial board of the Homosaurus, an LGBTQ+ linked data vocabulary.

Female presenting Asian woman with two breads and large hoop earrings wearing a black shirt. They are standing sideways and smiling into the camera in front of greenery

T-Kay Sangwand, Librarian for Digital Collection Development at the UCLA Digital Library Program

T-Kay Sangwand is a Certified Archivist, librarian, and DJ who specializes in building preservation partnerships for human rights documentation and cultural heritage materials, particularly in Latin America and the US. In 2017, she was named a Fulbright Specialist in Library and Information Science and in 2018-2019, she was a Fulbright Scholar with Mexico’s Ministry of Culture. She is currently a resident DJ at the LA-based radio station dublab where she hosts her monthly program “The Archive of Feelings.”

About the Keynote

Amid rapid societal and technological transformations and historic elections worldwide, ACH fosters dialogue, spaces, and solidarity on equity and justice across local, transborder, and global contexts. We envision this panel as a conversation and call-to-action about how we can use our individual and collective DH skills to build alternative justice-oriented infrastructures, spaces, and communities. We seek to explore our roles and responsibilities as members of the DH community in caring for ourselves, our students, our institutions, and each other.

Our program committee selected K.J. and T-Kay as two individuals who work in critical digital archival studies and praxis. Their work demonstrates the ways in which we can use our DH experience and expertise to document, preserve, and transform our world.

The ACH2024 Program Committee

Conference Co-Chairs: Pamella Lach (San Diego State University) and Sylvia Fernández (University of Texas at San Antonio)
Program Co-Chairs: Maira E. Álvarez (St. Mary’s University) and Rini Bhattacharya Mehta (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Technical Chair: Liz Grumbach (Arizona State University)