Networking Archaeological Data
and Communities
An NEH Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities
Leigh Anne Lieberman
Leigh Anne Lieberman is the Program Director for Networking Archaeological Data and Communities. She serves as the Director of Strategic Partnerships for the AAI/OC and the Digital Project Specialist in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. She has taught extensively at the university, secondary, and primary levels in both the United States and Italy. In 2022, she co-directed Digital Ancient Rome, an NEH Summer Seminar for K-12 Faculty, and she is also on of the Principal Investigators for Disciplinary Improvements for Past Global Change Research: Connecting Data Systems and Practitioners, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable Open Science Research Coordination Network (FAIROS RCN) grant awarded to the AAI/OC in 2022. In the field, she acts as the Manager of Data and Information Resources for the Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia (PARP:PS); as the Head of Materials for the Tharros Archaeological Research Project (TARP); and as the Data Management Director for the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (AEM:CAP).
Sarah Whitcher Kansa
As Executive Director of the AAI/OC, Sarah Whitcher Kansa collaborates on projects that advance data publishing and data literacy in various archaeological and cultural heritage communities. She has a Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of Edinburgh and has spent more than 25 years conducting zooarchaeological research at sites in the Near East and Europe. She brings an understanding of the challenges across the data lifecycle based on her combined experience as both a data creator and an editor for datasets submitted to OC for publication. She has been PI or co-PI on grants from the NEH, NSF, and IMLS to the AAI/OC and has organized workshops and forums at professional society meetings over the past 15 years aimed at advancing good data practices. Sarah is President of the International Council for Archaeozoology (2018-2023 term) and Chair of the Digital Technology Committee of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA). She also served on the Publications Committee for the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) and the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR).
Eric Kansa
Eric Kansa oversees development of Open Context, the AAI/OC’s open access data publishing service. His research explores Web architecture, service design, and how these issues relate to the social and professional context of the digital humanities. Eric also researches policy issues relating to intellectual property, including Linked Open Data, text-mining and cultural property concerns. He served as a Software Engineer and Senior Software Engineer for California public health data reporting during the first two years of the COVID Pandemic. He has participated in a number of Open Science, Open Government, cyberinfrastructure, text-mining, and scholarly user needs initiatives, and has taught project management and information service design in the UC Berkeley School of Information’s Clinic program. He has been a principal investigator and co-investigator on projects funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, NEH, IMLS, Hewlett-Packard, Sunlight Foundation, Google, NSF, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Melissa Cradic
Melissa Cradic is an archaeologist and museum curator at the Badè Museum of Archaeology in Berkeley, CA. She is also Lecturer in History & Judaic Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY and teaches Anthropology at Sonoma State University. Her fieldwork, teaching, research, and museum work aims to increase accessibility of archaeological data, including legacy collections and museum archives. Her work focuses on creating inclusive narratives through multi-platform initiatives such as open-access programming, museum education programs, academic and public scholarship, and digital exhibitions. A specialist in mortuary archaeology of the Middle East, Melissa has published her research in venues such as BASOR, Near Eastern Archaeology, Levant, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports and has contributed to numerous edited volumes. As Digital Humanities Program Associate, she will manage and lead digital humanities workshops and seminars at AAI/OC, drawing on her experience organizing and moderating public lectures, collaborating on field projects, developing curricula, managing collections and field data, and curating more than ten public exhibitions.
L. Meghan Dennis
L. Meghan Dennis is collaborating to develop the AAI/Open Context’s Data Literacy Program as a Postdoctoral Researcher for Data Interpretation and Public Engagement. Meghan brings a background in digital archaeological ethics and the impacts of ethical representations of archaeology in interactive media, 20+ years in archaeological and heritage field practice, teaching at the secondary and collegiate level, and experience within the video-game industry. Currently, Meghan is an ethics officer with the Computer Applications & Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) organization, where she was involved in designing and implementing the organization’s first code of ethics, and is a member of the organization’s Code of Conduct working group. Combining her interests in public education, ethical practice, and games media, Meghan aims to develop further research in how the use of interactive media can influence youth participation in ethical interactions with heritage and archaeology.
Paulina F. Przystupa
Paulina F. Przystupa is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Data Visualization and Reproducibility at the AAI/Open Context. Paulina is of Filipine and Polish descent and a settler in North America. She studied at the University of Washington (Seattle, WA, USA) where she earned a B.A. (2012) majoring in History and Anthropology. She earned her M.A. (2014) at the University of New Mexico, which is where she is completing her PhD in Anthropology (2021). She is working on her dissertation examining the relationship between the built environment and the cultural education of children. Beyond her academic work, Paulina has worked in cultural resource management in both Australia and the United States as a field technician, assistant cartographer, and lab technician. She is also a research associate of the Indigenous Digital Archive. She also writes about and reviews comics, movies, and shows at WWAC and moderates panels at popular culture conventions bringing an anthropological and academic perspective to popular media.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed through this Institute do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
For more information, please contact the Program Director, Leigh Anne Lieberman (leigh@opencontext.org).
