Organizers + Presenters

Barry Lam is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College and creator of the popular, award-winning podcast series Hi-Phi Nation. He will frame the week by sharing his journey from research to podcast. He received his BA in Philosophy and English at the University of California, Irvine (2001), and his PhD in Philosophy at Princeton University (January 2007).

Hannah McGregor is an Assistant Professor of Publishing at Simon Fraser University, where her research focuses on podcasting as scholarly communication, systemic barriers to access in the Canadian publishing industry, and magazines as middlebrow media. She is the co-creator of Witch, Please, a feminist podcast on the Harry Potter world, and the creator of the weekly podcast Secret Feminist Agenda, which is currently undergoing an experimental peer review process with Wilfrid Laurier University Press. She is also the co-editor of the book Refuse: CanLit in Ruins(Book*hug 2018).

Pam Lach (she/her) is the Digital Humanities Librarian at San Diego State University. She is Director of the Library’s Digital Humanities Center and Co-Director of SDSU’s Digital Humanities Initiative. Pam’s work explores how new and emerging technologies transform humanistic scholarship and pedagogy. Her areas of interest include data visualization, information retrieval, user experience design, digital pedagogy, surveillance, critical librarianship, and anti-racist digital humanities. She has a PhD in U.S. Cultural History with an emphasis on gender and film history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a MS in Information Science from UNC’s School of Information and Library Science.

Patrick Flanigan (he/him) is the Lead Cataloging Specialist at the SDSU Library where he catalogs materials in both print and digital formats. His focus is on improving the discovery of library resources and collections. Patrick is an alumnus of SDSU and has spent the last 30 years combining his passion for music with his enjoyment of working in libraries. As a student working at the SDSU Library he was in many bands and frequently recorded his musical efforts both in professional and home studios. After graduating from SDSU he worked as a cataloger at National University by day and pursued his music career by night, eventually leaving the library world to work in the booming internet industry. Years later with the emergence of digital resources and technology, he received a Masters Degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Missouri with a focus on digital resources. He continues to record music today for his project Punk Rock Drum Machine, using an 8 track digital recorder with analog controls and mastering the WAV files using Audacity. He supports Arsenal Football Club.

Cassie Tanks (she/her) is an MSLS graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Carolina Academic Library Association fellow. Currently she is leading the UNC Story Archive- a program that collects and preserves audio recordings of UNC students and alumni from historically underrepresented and silenced communities. She is also a research assistant for the digital humanities project Apartheid Heritage(s) at Northeastern University. Her interests focus on participatory metadata, intersectionality in the archives, transnational Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 20th century, and critical digital humanities. Cassie’s first job doing community outreach and dance instruction at a recreation center has profoundly impacted her to this day.

Brienne Hayes (they/them) is a nonbinary writer and programmer from San Diego, California. They graduated from San Diego State University, where they studied literature, mathematics, and linguistics. They currently work as a post-production supervisor at Rise Up Story Team and a volunteer data visualizer for The COVID Tracking Project. Brienne’s name can be found on podcasts discussing literature, gaming, and history, and their writing includes a self-published micro-anthology of environmental speculative fiction by SDSU students. They hope to someday become a scholar of queer theory and the digital humanities.