Meet the Speakers

Meet the speakers of the Open and Engaged 2025 Conference

Keynotes

Camille Callison, Chair of National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance (NIKLA)

Camille Callison is a proud member of the Tahltan Nation and a passionate cultural activist pursuing a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Manitoba. Her research critically examines the relationship between cultural memory institutions and the continued survival and activation of Indigenous knowledges, languages, and cultures. Camille is the founding Chair of the National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance (NIKLA-ANCLA) as well as co-lead of the Respectful Terminology Platform Project (RTPP). She contributes as a member of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Indigenous Matters Section and the North American Regional Division, and the IEEE P2890™ Recommended Practice for Provenance of Indigenous Peoples’ Data.

Lorna M. Hughes, of Digital Humanities and Dean for Global Engagement (Europe), University of Glasgow.

Her research focuses on the creation of digital cultural heritage, and the use and re-use of digital collections for research, teaching, and public engagement. Hughes has worked in digital humanities and on the development of hybrid digital collections based on material culture held by memory institutions at a number of organisations in the USA and UK. She has had leading roles on over twenty funded digital humanities and digital research projects, including the AHRC-funded Towards a National Collection discovery project, Our Heritage, Our Stories: Linking and searching community-generated digital content to develop the people’s national collection, and the Jisc-funded Welsh Experience of the First World War. She is the author of Digitizing Collections: Strategic Issues for the Information Manager, and co-editor of The Virtual Representation of the Past, and Cultural Heritage Infrastructures in Digital Humanities.

Presenters

Ashley Rojas, Integration Specialist & Web Developer at Local Contexts

Ashley Rojas (she/her) is the Integration Specialist & Web Developer for Local Contexts. She originally joined Local Contexts as Web Developer (May 2022-Sept 2023), and became Software/Web Developer (Oct 2023-July 2024) focusing on API implementation of the Hub’s Labels and Notices into other digital infrastructures, helping to develop the Hub’s features, and managing the Local Contexts website. Her role has grown to include the integration work required for third-party integrations via the Integration Partner program and partnerships. Ashley is originally from Lenapehoking (New York City). She received her Bachelor’s degree in Classics & Classical Archaeology and her Master’s degree in Digital Humanities. Her interests lie in bringing technology to the forefront of learning, and her work has been focused on museums and archaeology. After the shift to at-home work during the pandemic, Ashley is now also interested in digital learning without set spaces. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, traveling, playing video games, and coding.

Blanka Matkovic, Data Services Specialist at the British Library

Blanka Matkovic holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick (UK) and a PhD in History from the University of Zagreb (Croatia). She also completed university programmes in archaeology, heritage, journalism, museum studies, and library and information services management. She has been working in the British Library since 2019, first as an Assistant Data Services Specialist and then Data Services Specialist. She is particularly interested in decommunization of heritage as an Eastern-European form of decolonisation as well as Indigenous knowledge and data sovereignty.

Brigitte Vézina, Director of Policy and Open Culture of Creative Commons

Brigitte is Creative Commons' Director of Policy and Open Culture, where she leads the organization's policy efforts and runs the Open Culture Program, which promotes open access to cultural heritage worldwide. Before joining CC, she worked for a decade as a legal officer at WIPO and then ran her own consultancy, advising Europeana, SPARC Europe and others on copyright matters. Brigitte is a fellow at the Canadian think tank Centre for International Governance Innovation. She holds a bachelor’s degree in law from the Université de Montréal and a master’s in law from Georgetown University. She has been a member of the Bar of Québec since 2003.

Florence Devouard, Co-Executive Director of Wiki in Africa

A Wikipedian since 2002, a former Chair of Wikimedia Foundation and a founding member of Wikimedia France, Florence Devouard was born in France where she currently lives. Above everything, she loves to share her knowledge of new practices and online communities. She cares for language diversity and multicultural dialogue and is a supporter of the open-source and free knowledge movement. Since 2013, Florence is the co-leader on projects related to Wikipedia and Africa, such as Wiki Loves Africa (photographic contest in Africa), Wiki Loves Women (content liberation project related to African Women) or WikiChallenge African Schools (that introduces the next generation of editors to Wikipedia). She is the co-founder and co-director of a South Africa based non profit organization, Wiki in Africa. She also was involved as the Scientific Collaborator at SUSPI in several instances, such as during to the Wikipedia Primary School SSAJRP research programme (developing and evaluating a system to assess Wikipedia articles for primary education in South Africa). She is currently under contract with Wikimedia CH to advance their Care Programme. She has been a Wikipedian-in-Residence at WIPO since 2022.

Jennifer Macmillan, Collections Systems Specialist at the British Film Institute

Jennifer Macmillan is the Collections Systems Specialist at the British Film Institute, where she manages and improves the complex collections systems that underpin the working of a national collection. Previously, she worked in collections systems at the Imperial War Museum and is the Co-Chair of the Adlib and Axiell Collections UK User Group.

Jenny Basford, Repository Services Lead at the British Library

Dr Jenny Basford leads the Repository Services team at the British Library, where her time is divided between the Shared Repository Service for GLAM sector organisations and restoring EThOS, the E-Theses Online Service. She has spent over a decade managing various institutional repositories.

Kristina Rose, Data Coordinator at the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum

After finishing her studies in Film Culture with an emphasis on film archiving and cataloguing, Kristina Rose works as a data coordinator at the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum. This includes managing data for EFG – The European Film Gateway, the domain aggregator of European film archives towards Europeana, as well as for the film domain helpdesk of the German Digital Library (DDB). She was responsible for the data coordination, vocabulary management and user testing for the DE-BIAS project.

Lena Bohman, Founding organizers of the Data Rescue Project

Lena Bohman is one of the founding members of the Data Rescue project. She is a data librarian in the health sciences field in the New York City area.

Lynda Kellam, Founding organizers of the Data Rescue Project

Dr. Lynda Kellam is one of the founding organizers of the Data Rescue Project and the Snyder-Granader Director of Research Data & Digital Scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Marieke van Erp, Department Head DHLab, KNAW Humanities Cluster & Co-scientific Director Cultural AI Lab

Marieke van Erp is a Language Technology and Semantic Web expert engaged in interdisciplinary research. She holds a PhD in computational linguistics from Tilburg University and has worked on many (inter)national interdisciplinary projects. Since 2017, she has been leading the Digital Humanities Research Lab at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Humanities Cluster. She is one of the founders and scientific directors of the Cultural AI Lab, a collaboration between 8 research and cultural heritage institutions in the Netherlands aimed at the study, design and development of socio-technological AI systems that are aware of the subtle and subjective complexity of human culture. In January 2023, she was awarded an ERC Consolidator project that will investigate how language and semantic web technologies can improve the creation of knowledge graphs supporting humanities research.

Revekka Kefalea, Independent Researcher, Project Manager at Inter Alia

Revekka Kefalea (she/her) is an independent researcher and project manager working at the intersection of culture, technology, and civic engagement. Her work explores museum studies, digital curation, critical heritage, and open access, with a focus on the history of public access to arts and culture, the politics of identity and memory, and the impact of the digital shift and the open movement on cultural heritage. She is an active advocate of the Open GLAM/Culture movement, promoting equitable knowledge access and inclusive, reflective approaches to sharing cultural heritage. As a project manager at Inter Alia, Revekka designs and leads projects on digital cultural heritage, emerging technologies, digital literacy, open access, and civic participation. A certified facilitator of the Creative Commons Certificate Course on Open Culture, she helps professionals, activists, and community members navigate copyright and open licensing in cultural heritage digitization, aiming to foster institutional and policy change. She studied social anthropology, and holds postgraduate degrees in political science, sociology, and urban studies.

Rupert Gatti, Director of Thoth Open Metadata and Open Book Publishers

Rupert has been involved in the development of a number of open access publishing infrastructures, including: Thoth Open Metadata, the Open Book Collective, the Open Journals Collective and Open Book Publishers. He is also a Fellow in Economics at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Sarah Molloy, Head of Library Research Support at Queen Mary University of London, and Co-Investigator, Enact Project

Sarah Molloy (she/her) is Head of Library Research Support, with responsibility for Archives and Special Collections, Open Research Services, and Research Reporting. She has a background in metadata and cataloguing, research information for assessment, and open repositories. She is a co-convenor of the DSpace UK and Ireland National User Group, and a Co-Investigator on the Enact Project.

Silvio Peroni, Director of OpenCitations

Silvio Peroni holds a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, and he is an Associate Professor at the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies, University of Bologna. He is the director of OpenCitations (https://opencitations.net) and an expert in Semantic Web technologies, the semantic interoperability of Open Science services and infrastructures, as well as bibliographic information and cultural heritage data.

Dr Tim Evans, Assistant Director of the Archaeology Data Service and Heritage Science Data Service

Tim Evans is responsible for all day-to-day operations of the ADS and HSDS, and maintains and develops key partnerships and strategically important projects within the cultural heritage sector.

William Waites, Principal Research Engineer at the University of Southampton

William Waites is a computer scientist and engineer who has worked for 30 years in the public, private and third sectors across Internet infrastructure, computational biology, open government and library data, broadcast radio, epidemiology and public health.

Session Chairs

Jez Cope, Data Services Lead at the British Library

Jez is a computer scientist and educator who helps researchers communicate and collaborate more effectively using technology, mainly focusing on research data management policy, practice, training and advocacy. He is currently Data Services Lead at The British Library, where he manages the UK DataCite Consortium and works towards embedding practices of Collections as Data in the national library. Since early 2025 he has been engaged with grassroots data rescue & safeguarding efforts that complement more established institutions and infrastructures. Cheers,

Joanna Norman , Director of the V&A Research Institute, National Art Library and Archives, V&A

Joanna Norman is Director of the V&A Research Institute, National Art Library (NAL) and Archives at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where she is responsible for leading the research strategy, programmes and partnerships across the V&A family of sites. Her previous curatorial projects include the major exhibitions Baroque 1620-1800: Style in the Age of Magnificence (V&A, 2009) and Treasures from Budapest (Royal Academy of Arts, 2010), new permanent galleries Europe 1600–1815 (V&A, 2015), Scottish Design Galleries at V&A Dundee (2018) and most recently Between Two Worlds: Francis Williams and Vanley Burke (V&A, 2023). Her remit covers the V&A’s involvement in collaborative research projects, undergraduate and postgraduate teaching (including the 40-year strong V&A/ RCA History of Design Programme), research affiliations and events, as well as oversight of the V&A’s archives (institutional and practitioners’ records) and the National Art Library, the foremost art and design library in the UK. Joanna’s research interests range from early modern Italian and French design, theatre and performance, to histories of collecting and display. She currently leads the coordination of a pilot programme of Early Career Research Fellowships in Cultural and Heritage Institutions, supported by the AHRC, and co-chairs the Independent Research Organisation consortium.

Mia Ridge, British Library’s Digital Curator for Western Heritage Collections

Dr Mia Ridge is the British Library’s Digital Curator for Western Heritage Collections. Part of the Digital Research team, she leads projects and provides advice and training on computational research, AI / machine learning and crowdsourcing with library collections. Mia has published and presented widely, and participates in many international collaborations.

Rosie Higman, Open Research Services Manager, London School of Economics and Political Science

Rosie Higman is the Open Research Services Manager at the London School of Economics and Political Science where she leads on open research, open access, research data management, bibliometrics and copyright. Alongside this role she is studying for a PhD on Open Access and the Role of National Libraries jointly supervised by the British Library and The University of Sheffield. Prior to this she has worked in research data management at The University of Sheffield, University of Manchester and University of Cambridge.

Sally Chambers, Head of Research Infrastructure Services at the British Library

Sally Chambers joined The British Library as Head of Research Infrastructures Services in March 2024. She combines this role with her work as a member of the DARIAH, the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities Board of Directors, where she focuses on the development of sustainable services and FAIR dataset portfolios in the context of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), the common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage and the Cultural Heritage Cloud. Her previous roles include: Digital Humanities Research Coordinator at the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities, Ghent University in Belgium; DATA-KBR-BE project coordinator at KBR, Royal Library of Belgium which facilitates data-level access to KBR’s digitised and born-digital collections for digital humanities research. She has been an active participant in the international Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) Labs community, and a co-author of Open a GLAM Lab.