I’m an archivist, a historian, and an Assistant Professor at Western University’s Faculty of Information & Media Studies. My work focuses on names and naming, the multiple histories of information, and equitable cataloging in cultural heritage institutions.
You have reached my resume website. Or perhaps you were interested in…
How To Cite Me HistSex Project Trans & Queer Metadata Reports
I am a disabled, white, queer & nonbinary settler hailing from unceeded N’dakina in Aln8ba8dwaw8gan. I am now an uninvited guest on the traditional lands of the ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ (Anishinaabek), Haudenosaunee, Eelünaapéewi Lūnaapéewak (Lūnaapéewak) & Chonnonton nations. I live on lands between the London Township, Treaty 6 & McKee Treaty 2, 1790, and I work on lands connected with the Sombra Treaties of 1796 & the Dish with One Spoon Covenant Wampum.
As a Vanier Scholar at the University of British Columbia’s iSchool, I focused on the (multiple) histories of information and on the practice of equitable cataloguing in cultural heritage institutions, or GLAMS (aka Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums, and Special Collections). I also serve as an Organizer on the Homosaurus Collective Collective; the Homosaurus is a widely-used linked data vocabulary for queer terminology developed by and for the queer communities for use in GLAMS. I support equitable knowledge work through CritCat.org, a database of literature on the topic, prepared as part of my doctoral program, along with more than thirty peer-reviewed publications during the same time period.
I received my MLIS and training as a knowledge worker and an archivist from Indiana University Bloomington and I continue my work as a community archivist on behalf of polyamorous and asexual communities. I am the the Archivist-Historian for the Haslam Collection on Polyamory part of the Consensual Nonmonogamy Committee of theAmerican Psychological Association and also to the ArQuives, the largest independent LGBTQ2+ Archives in the world and currently Canada’s only national LGBTQ2+ archives.
I also trained as a historian at Drew University, where I focused on the history of the book and the history of sexuality. My work in these areas has continued, and they are the central focus of my first book (Annals of Pornographie: How Porn Became Bad) and my third, tentatively titled: The Kinseys and the Myth of the Sexual Revolution. My second book was a co-edited collection called Ethics in Linked Data, published while I was a doctoral student. I also direct HistSex.org, a free and open access resource for the history of sexuality.
In 2022-23 I was one of UBC Library’s EDI Scholars-in-Residence; I was also an awardee of UBC’s Public Scholar Initiative in 2021 and again in 2025, when I also received a fellowship in Applied Ethics from the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics.
I was a cofounder and the coordinator for both the Trans Metadata Collective and the Queer Metadata Collective, which were organizations of ~100 (TMDC) and ~1000 (QMDC) knowledge workers with a concerted interest in improving the description and classification of queer, trans and gender diverse people in GLAMS and other sociotechnical systems. The TMDC received the Nancy DeLaurier Award from the Visual Resources Association in recognition of our achievement. Finally, my work on the Name Change Policy Working Group to allow married, Indigenous, queer, trans, and gender diverse authors to change their publication names has affected the policies of tens of thousands of academic journals.
Download c.v. (pdf)PhD. in Library, Archival and Information Studies, 2025
The University of British Columbia
MLIS, Archives & Digital Humanities, 2020
Indiana University Bloomington
MA, History and Culture, 2013
Drew University
BA, English & History, 2011
Keene State College
Current
Taught American History, Essay Writing, and Democracy to freshman, sophomores, and juniors.
Used class and internet participation, outside engagement in teaching 20-30 pupils.
Instructed on a variety of topics, including creative poetry, freshman composition, and literature classes.
CritCat is short for “critical cataloging,” a movement of cultural heritage workers who work to bring social justice, radical empathy, and outreach work into their everyday practice. This site aims to serve as a resource for catalogers and the cataloging-curious.
TMDC is a group of dozens of information professionals with a concerted interest in improving the description and classification of trans and gender diverse people. The Collective’s primary goal was the development of a set of best practices, released June 2022.
CritCat is short for “critical cataloging,” a movement of cultural heritage workers who work to bring social justice, radical empathy, and outreach work into their everyday practice. This site aims to serve as a resource for catalogers and the cataloging-curious.
A freely-available, peer-reviewed, and open-source resource by sex educators, historians, and librarians active in sexuality fields.
The Marriage Equality Collection, held at the Kinsey Institute Library and Special Collection, includes audio and video files, photographs, historical documents and ephemera representing experiences of same-sex couples.
This dissertation centers on understanding and fixing the persistent and wicked problem of marginalization in systems. I do this by examining the “power to name” utilized by cultural heritage institutions (like Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums & Special Collections; GLAMS) and informational infrastructures (like databases, psychological schema, or social media platforms). As systems are defined by boundaries, the act of naming or labelling people, places, and things in these Knowledge Organization Systems (KOSes) produces marginalizations and exclusions. I undertake a comprehensive analysis to understand how a century of literature and efforts aimed at addressing these issues have partially, piecemeal, or totally failed. In response, I develop a three-pronged project combining (1) historical analysis, (2) qualitative, and (3) participatory action research across three temporal dimensions:
Add the full text or supplementary notes for the publication here using Markdown formatting.
2011-20
Current and Past
