[Air-L] EVENT SERIES: Born-Digital Evidence and Historical Scholarship

[James A Hodges]

Good afternoon, and apologies for cross-posting:

I'm writing to announce a series of events that I have co-organized with
Thorsten Ries (UT Austin, Germanic Studies) and the UT Austin iSchool
colloquium series.

The first event has already occurred, but there's still time to join us for
the next two panels! We also have a video recording available from the
first event (See below).

Series Description:
This series features international subject expert talks from the libraries
and archives sector, a digital investigation collective and from the
cybersecurity sector to consider born-digital evidence from a Historical
Scholarship and Humanities perspective. Our digital present poses
challenges to long-term preservation and curation of born-digital archives,
but also to their cautious selection, critical appraisal and methodological
analysis and interpretation as historical evidence. Establishing, proving
and maintaining the chain of digital evidence, evaluating the evidential
status of born-digital sources and interpreting the traces of historical
digital events will be the daily practice of historians studying our
present time. The talk series Born-digital Evidence and Historical
Scholarship is a starter for the conversation about how we establish this
practice and build the skillsets, standards and procedures for Historical
Scholarship and the Humanities in coordination with libraries and archives.


EVENT 1:
Aric Toler (Bellingcat) and Charlotte Godart (Bellingcat)
Date: April 12, 10-11:30am CST

Aric Toler is the training and research director at Bellingcat, an online
publication specialized in open-source intelligence. Aric's research
including Russian intelligence operations, the war in the Donbas, and the
2014 downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. Aric
received his Master's degree in Slavic Languages & Literatures from the
University of Kansas in 2013 and has since been working with Bellingcat.

Charlotte Godart is an open source investigator & trainer for Bellingcat.
She researches conflict zones, breaking news events, and the spread of
disinformation. She creates online training material that is available for
anyone interested in pursuing digital verification through the Bellingcat
website. She also travels globally to teach online verification techniques
and methodology to journalists, researchers, activists, and lawyers. Before
Bellingcat, she was at the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley.

For those who were unable to join us, a recording is available at the
following URL:
https://utexas.zoom.us/rec/share/rcRVKJKbzOVnck4rjvf5UtXgKM4fnyv0Rr0edmx6W5zCyP4-rNkYYZf_qkPjRiLX.STgLAkcb4CtR9z4e

EVENT 2:
Euan Cochrane (Yale) and David A. Bliss (UT Austin)
Date: April 19, 10-11:30 CST
Event: https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/events/256
Registration:
https://utexas.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwtceutqz0sH9wBI0GnrcS2PsoP12eCMd_v

Euan Cochrane is Digital Preservation Manager for Yale University
Libraries. He has a particular interest in software preservation and the
use of emulation to maintain access to born digital information. Before
joining Yale, Euan helped to establish the data archive for official
statistics at Statistics New Zealand, in addition to working in the Digital
Continuity team at Archives New Zealand and consulting for Deloitte in
Australia on Information Management.

David Bliss is the Systems and Digital Archivist at UT Libraries, where he
is responsible for a variety of digital preservation infrastructure and
processes for libraries collections. Prior to April 2021, he was the
Digital Processing Archivist at the Benson Latin American Collection at UT
Austin, focused primarily on implementing and supporting post-custodial
digitization projects based at partner repositories in Latin America. David
is a 2017 graduate of the UT School of Information.

EVENT 3:
Matthias Vallentin (Tenzir)
Date: April 23, 10am CST
Event: https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/events/257
Registration:
https://utexas.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAvd--urDMrGNWIVyrmeDoSnrQaDwj3mekk

Matthias Vallentin is founder and CEO at Tenzir. His PhD work at UC
Berkeley about network forensics laid the foundation for the software that
Tenzir now develops an open security analytics platform to empower
defenders. Prior to founding Tenzir, Matthias worked on high-performance
network monitoring to provide security operators with in-depth visibility
about their infrastructure.

Looking forward to the events! I hope that you can join us.

Sincerely,
James

-- 

*JAMES A. HODGES, Ph.D.*
Bullard Postdoctoral Research Fellow
University of Texas at Austin
School of Information