FOUNDER & DIRECTOR

Dr. Anne Luther is a specialist for digital heritage and a digital humanities scholar. Her work applies technology, design and humanities research for the interaction, exploration and opening of cultural heritage preserved and represented in digital data. She is the founder of The Institute for Digital Heritage, an organization that specializes in the development of digital solutions for cultural heritage. She also is a Principal Investigator for Digital Benin, a digital platform bringing together rich documentation from collections worldwide to provide a long-requested overview of the royal artworks looted in the 19th century from the Kingdom of Benin.

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CULTURAL HERITAGE LAW

Andrea Wallace is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Exeter. She holds a PhD in Cultural Heritage Law from the University of Glasgow, CREATe in partnership with the National Library of Scotland. Andrea previously received an LLM in European Business Law from Radboud University in the Netherlands, a JD from DePaul University College Law in Chicago, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Andrea’s research explores legal issues surrounding copyright, cultural heritage institutions, and the public domain. Andrea frequently writes and presents on open access to cultural heritage and equitable aspects of intellectual property management relevant to the repatriation of digital and material cultural heritage.

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CULTURAL HERITAGE LAW

Mathilde Pavis is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Exeter. She holds a PhD in Intellectual Property from the University of Exeter. Mathilde trained in law in the UK (PhD, LLM, University of Exeter) and France (Bachelor of Law / Licence, Masters, University of Rennes). Mathilde’s research interests explore the legal and ethical issues related to the protection of individuals’ face, body, voice and likeness as well as the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage. Mathilde investigates the impact of new technologies on individuals’ identities and intangible cultural heritage, and what equitable terms of engagement with this type of content look like in practice.

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DIGITAL HERITAGE SPECIALIST

Chao Tayiana Maina also Headstrong Historian is a Kenyan digital heritage specialist and digital humanities scholar working at the intersection of culture and technology. Her work primarily focuses on the application of technology in the preservation, engagement and dissemination of African heritage. She is the founder of African Digital Heritage, a co-founder of the Museum of British Colonialism and a co-founder of the Open Restitution Africa project. Online initiatives seeking to encourage a more critical, holistic and knowledge-based approach to the design and implementation of digital solutions within African cultural heritage. Her work has been featuredon Reuters, BBC news, BBC Arts, Ntv, KBC and 3Sat.

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ARTIST I AI I BLACK CULTURE

Minne is an interdisciplinary artist and doctoral student in Art and Art Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her academic research emerges at the intersection of machine learning, Art and Museum Education. Minne’s ongoing art project — Igùn AI addresses a 17-year artistic absence during the interregnum, following the 1897 British punitive expedition in Benin Kingdom. She obtained an MA in Museum Studies from The George Washington University and BA in Creative Arts from University of Maiduguri, Nigeria.

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ANALYTICS I DIGITAL STORY TELLING

Priyanka is an advanced analytics professional and cultural studies practitioner with expertise in data-driven storytelling. She has developed numerous web technologies and big-data systems to advance cultural heritage research and social computing at Harvard Business School, Harvard Graduate School of Design and Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, Germany. During her dual Masters in Computer Science and Humanities from International Institute of Information Technology in India, she worked on digitizing and annotating ancient Indian heritage artifacts - including South Indian temples, Pattachitra paintings, Gotipua performances etc. Following this, she extended her work as a data scientist at Softbank Corp and is currently working as a digital strategist at Google.

WRITER I AUDIO ARCHIVIST I BLACK AMERICAN MUSIC HISTORIAN

Through his extensive studies of Black American Music, Gabriel has developed a unique approach to writing, documenting, and speaking about marginalized peoples in the US and abroad. He has been published for over a decade in print and online. The Coltrane Symposium has given him a public platform to further discuss the origins of Jazz, Blues, and Hip-Hop, while simultaneously speaking about racism, disproportionate economic opportunities for Black artists, and capitalist-driven resale markets. Gabriel has also spent the last several years involved in preschool, academic, and museum spaces. Currently his focus is on building the cow (creative outlets and works) arts program; a multidisciplinary space that will focus on releasing music, small press publications, and promoting performance art.

DATA VISUALIZATION

With a background in academic research and professional work in museums, paired with passions that range from fermentation to pottery, Maxene is interdisciplinary to the core. In personal projects, she uses data visualization not only to weave her interests together, but also to satisfy her curiosity in a creative manner. Professionally, she strives to pull from her fieldwork and data collection to humanize the data that she works with. As she's experienced how numbers and data can induce fear, her goal is to make data more accessible and delightful through writing, and developing interactive data visualizations.

LAWYER I LAW LECTURER I CURATOR

Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja, is a lawyer and law lecturer at the National Institute for Legislative Studies, Abuja. He holds a PhD in law (Legislative Drafting) degree from the University of London. He is formerly the Chairman of the Governing Board of the Nigerian Copyright Commission. He is currently the Ag. Head of the Bills and Legislative Drafting Division of the National Institute for Legislative Studies. Since 2012, Dr. Jaja has served as the Editor-In-Chief of the International Journal of Legislative Drafting and Law Reform. In September 2021, the Government of Rivers State of Nigeria appointed Dr. Jaja as the curator of the forthcoming Hon. Mary Odili Musuem/Digital Library of the Legal History of Nigeria. The said digital library seeks to digitise about 100,000 legal documents on the three major sources of Nigerian law namely: 1. Common law legal system inherited from British colonial era, (2) indigenous Customary Laws and (3) Islamic (Sharia) Law.

WOMEN-OWNED CULTURAL DESIGN AND RESEARCH THINK TANK

Grey Area Collective was born out of a shared desire to use our design, strategy and storytelling chops to tackle complex challenges with purpose, and create radical change. We’re physically established in New York City and San Francisco, but take on projects across the world, big and small.

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MULTIDISCIPLINARY DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT STUDIO

Behaviorovertime is a multidisciplinary design and development studio that creates digital tools and experiential artifacts. We work with museums, research labs, archives, schools, libraries, and cultural initiatives.

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NAIROBI BASED NGO

African Digital Heritage is a Nairobi based, non profit organisation working to encourage a more critical, holistic and knowledge-based approach to the design and implementation of digital solutions Our mission is to empower African cultural heritage sectors through the use of technologies in aspects such as digitization of assets, digital engagement and digital storytelling. By specializing in digital approaches for African heritage, we hope to cement the place of African culture in an era of rapidly changing technologies and endless frontiers.

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