Meet our Team

Elspeth Brown

Elspeth Brown

Director

Dr. Elspeth H. Brown is Professor of History at the University of Toronto, where she teaches queer and trans history; the history of US capitalism; oral history; and the history and theory of photography. Her digital humanities research has focused on queer and trans archives and oral history. She received her PhD from Yale University in 2000 and is the author of (most recently) WORK! A Queer History of Modeling (Duke University Press, 2019) and co-editor of Feeling Photography (2014, Duke University Press with Thy Phu). She is the principal investigator for the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory, a team-based project and virtual working space where members come together to share work, ideas, and new knowledge about the creation of LGBTQ oral histories in the digital age. She is an active volunteer and former Co-President of the Board at The ArQuives, Canada’s Lesbian and Gay Archives, the world’s largest LGBTQ+ community archive.

You can learn more about her work at https://www.elspethbrown.org and sometimes find her on Twitter at @ElspethHBrown. For email please use: dhn.director@utoronto.ca.

Jennifer Wemigwans

Jennifer Wemigwans

Director, Indigenous Digital Practice Initiative

Jennifer Wemigwans, PhD, is from Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory on Manitoulin Island, Ontario. She takes pride in working to invert the conventional use of media by revealing the potential for Indigenous cultural expression and Indigenous knowledge through new technologies, education, and the arts. Her book A Digital Bundle: Protecting and Promoting Indigenous Knowledge Online (2018) explores the prospects of Indigenous Knowledge education and digital projects in a networked world. Through Digital Bundles, she challenges non-Indigenous audiences to adopt a new way of perceiving and engaging with Indigenous Knowledge. Recently, Dr. Wemigwans completed an Augmented Reality Teaching shared by Dr. Gokoomis (Grandmother) Jacque Lavallee on the meaning of Wendigo. In this 5-minute AR experience, launched through ceremony at the Toronto Biennial of Art 2022, users learn about the history of this territory and how kindness is our connection to land and each other. She is an Assistant Professor in the Adult Education and Community Development Program at OISE University of Toronto where she won the Award for Excellence in Educational Leadership in 2023.

You can learn more about the Indigenous Digital Practice at https://dhn.utoronto.ca/indigenous-digital-practice/. For email please use: jennifer.wemigwans@utoronto.ca.

Danielle Taschereau Mamers

Danielle Taschereau Mamers

Managing Director

Danielle Taschereau Mamers is the Managing Director of the CDHI. Danielle received her PhD in Media Studies from the University of Western Ontario in 2017. She has previously held postdoctoral fellowships at McMaster University (ECS), the University of Pennsylvania (WHC), and the University of Toronto (JHI). Danielle’s research identifies critical and creative strategies for destabilizing authority structures reproduced by documents, images, and their archives. Her first book, Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing (Fordham UP, forthcoming), investigates Indigenous artists’ engagements with settler documentation of Indian status in Canada. Her other projects include a study of art as a method of political theorizing and an archival and field-based analysis of the decolonial potential of bison reintroduction. Bridging critical digital humanities, environmental humanities, and public scholarship, Danielle co-created the Field Guide to Lost Futures with student researchers at McMaster University.

You can learn more about her work at www.dtmwrites.com and sometimes find her on Twitter at @DTMwrites. For email please use: d.taschereau@utoronto.ca.

Claire Battershill

Claire Battershill

Faculty Fellow

Claire Battershill, Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, specializes in book history, digital archives, and Modernist Literature. In 2023–24, she holds the Wendy M. Cecil Professorship at Victoria College and is a Faculty Fellow with the CDHI. Battershill co-directs The Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP), a critical digital archive of 20th-century publishers’ records. Her work encompasses feminist perspectives on digital humanities, affect, collaboration, student labor, and the interplay between digital and material archives, and she has authored numerous articles and books on these subjects. She’s also the author of Circus (McClelland & Stewart 2014); Modernist Lives (Bloomsbury 2018); and, most recently, Women and Letterpress Printing 1920-2020: Gendered Impressions (Cambridge University Press 2022). 

You can reach Claire at claire.battershill@utoronto.ca.  

Tanya Rohrmoser

Tanya Rohrmoser

Communications Officer

Tanya Rohrmoser is a writer and the Communications Officer for CDHI. She received her M.A. in English Literature from Brock University in 2010 and is a graduate of the Professional Writing & Communications program at Humber College. She has done consulting for local businesses, and worked in communications roles for House & Home Media, TIFF, University of Toronto Press, and Ridley College.

You can learn more about Tanya’s work at www.tanyarohrmoser.com and find her on Twitter at @TanyaRohrmoser. Reach her via email at tanya.rohrmoser@utoronto.ca.

Julia Gruson-Wood

Julia Gruson-Wood

Research Associate

Julia Gruson-Wood is a Research Associate for the VP Office of Research & Innovation and CDHI. She is an interdisciplinary critical health scholar and received her PhD in Science & Technology Studies from York University. Julia previously held two postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Guelph: one focusing on the impact of parents’ gender relations in the largest longitudinal family-based health study in Canada; and the other, an arts-based intersectional SSHRC-funded project studying Ontario 2SLGBTQI+ parenting experiences in a post-legal parity context. Julia also collaborates on critical autism and neurodiversity-related grants and is currently completing her first book, Remaking Therapy, Reshaping Autism: social relations and the governance of applied behaviour therapies (UBC Press). Julia currently serves as an Adjunct Faculty member for both the Social Practice and Transformational Change PhD program, and Re·Vision: the centre for art and social justice (University of Guelph).

You can reach Julia at julia.grusonwood@utoronto.ca.

Matthew Lefaive

Matthew Lefaive

Digital Humanities Developer

Matthew Lefaive graduated from UTSC in 2019 with a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Linguistics. He serves as the Digital Humanities Developer in the CDHI, aiding DH researchers in creating project websites and digital exhibitions. He is also the Project Manager for Bioline International – the longest running project currently housed in UTSC’s Knowledge Equity Lab – managing the platform content and day-to-day workflow. Matthew is interested in open access research and developing web applications to assist in language preservation and learning.

You can reach Matt at matthew.lefaive@utoronto.ca.

Betsy Moss

Betsy Moss

Events & Programs Coordinator

Betsy Moss is the Events and Programs Coordinator of the CDHI. Betsy received her PhD in art history from the University of Toronto in 2016. Previously she was the Coordinator, Events and Administration at The Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto. Through the Ho Centre she also produces the podcast The Circled Square: Teaching Buddhism in Higher Education, which features interviews with professors on their teaching strategies and approaches. Betsy’s research explores the functions and theoretical implications of votive adornments added to Byzantine icons in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. As a sessional instructor, she teaches courses on a wide range of visual and artistic practices, from Byzantine icons to the history of modern design. You can find her on Twitter at @byzbets. For email, please use dhn.admin@utoronto.ca
Katie Mackinnon

Katie Mackinnon

CDHI Postdoctoral Fellow in Community Data 2022-2024

Katie Mackinnon is completing her PhD in the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. Her research focuses on histories of the web, including early uses and experiences of young people in the late 1990s. She interrogates ethical approaches to web archival research and youth data, and examines social, infrastructural, and policy issues of the web.

 

Rachel Corbman

Rachel Corbman

CDHI Postdoctoral Fellow in Community Data 2022-2024

Rachel Corbman received a PhD in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Stony Brook University in 2019. Her research and teaching interests span feminist studies, queer studies, disability studies, transgender studies, the public and digital humanities, and the history of gender and sexuality. Her current book project, “Conferencing on the Edge: A Queer History of Feminist Field Formation, 1969-89,” offers a history of the conflicts that shaped U.S. women’s studies and gay and lesbian studies in the 1970s and 1980s.

Chloe Bordewich

Chloe Bordewich

JHI & CDHI Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow

Chloe Bordewich is Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute and CDHI. She writes about the history of information and the politics of historical narrative in West Asia and North Africa. Her current book explores citizens’ fight for freer access to information in Egypt in both the past and the present. Chloe received her PhD in history and Middle Eastern studies from Harvard University (2022) and was a postdoctoral fellow in public history at Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research (2022–23). Interested in multilingual DH and spatial storytelling, Chloe is also co-leader of the Boston Little Syria Project, a public/digital history initiative that documents the history of Boston’s first Arabic-speaking neighborhood.

You can learn more about Chloe’s work at www.chloebordewich.com. Reach her via email at chloe.bordewich@utoronto.ca.

Parita Patel

Parita Patel

UX Design Co-Op Student at CDHI

Parita is a Master of Information Student at the University of Toronto studying User Experience Design. She has joined the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative for the Summer Co-Op position, in which she will be assisting research teams in designing and building engaging digital platforms to bring their research to the public. Parita pursued a Bachelor of Technology from DA-IICT (India) for her undergraduate, where she took the HCI elective and was inspired to delve deeper into how users interact with technology. Witnessing the experience of her grandfather in navigating technology, Parita realised that not everything is designed for all, and explored what field of study could help her address that issue. She ended up in the field of UX Design, where she seeks to create intuitive experiences which can be accessed by as many people as possible.

You can reach Parita at pari.patel@mail.utoronto.ca