We are delighted to present this new group of archivists and records managers who will be collaborating for the next year on projects of communications, advocacy and promotion of the profession.
We invite you to read their biographies to learn more about their professional experience and academic work.
Razan Ahmad, Jordan
Razan holds a BA certificate in Conservation and Restoration Management and a Master’s degree in Library and Information Sciences. She started working in 2017 on digitizing 35 mm slides, negatives, video tapes, prints, transparencies and other media, and was responsible for ensuring that archival materials were handled properly with care.
She has already scanned collections and digitized more than 18,000 slides including those of British photographer Jane Taylor, journalist & political analyst Rami G. Khouri, British official Charles Wilson, and archaeologists George Bass, Robert Schick, and Linda K. Jacobsa and has worked with archival team members at ACOR (American Centre of Oriental Research) to train new members in digitization of the appropriate archival materials and produce digitization guides for training purposes. She has also presented a training session about Photo Digitization at ACOR and participated in the Mapping Digital Cultural Heritage “MAdih” project at CBRL (Council for British Research in the Levant) of the British Institute in Amman (2019).
She has participated in a large number of workshops and courses such as those on Oral history & Audio-archiving – learning to catalog, process and edit digital sound archives on oral history in Jordan (Institut français du Proche-Orient – IFPO) and on Collection Management and Documentation Techniques (UNESCO). She participated in training workshops and became a member of the archiving project on ‘Visualizing Palestine’ which specializes in digitizing maps. She attended the second and third sessions of Jordan’s Cultural Heritage Strategy meetings, entitled respectively ‘Museums, Awareness and Education’ and ‘Research and Studies’ held by USAID (United States Agency for International Development) under the SCHEP project (Sustainable Cultural Heritage through Engagement of Local Communities) (2019).
Zoe Dickinson, US (originally from UK)
Zoe Dickinson is currently working as an Archives/Records Officer for an international organisation in Washington, DC. Prior to this, she worked at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria and volunteered at a number of organisations in Scotland, UK. Zoe graduated from the MSc Information Management and Preservation (archives/records management) postgraduate degree programme in 2016, and as part of her studies undertook a placement at the National Archives of Malta. Zoe has always been interested in travel and history and saw working internationally in archives as the opportunity to do both at the same time.
Zoe is currently an active member of the Section of International Organisations (SIO) and volunteered to become part of the Recommendations Committee for the Annual Meeting in Brussels (2019). She also worked on the editorial team reviewing articles for the “sections” special issue of ‘Comma’ and will be on the Election Committee for the upcoming elections to the SIO Steering Committee.
Zoe main interests lie in both international archives and how members of minority groups, specifically women and members of the LGBTQ+ community, are represented in archives. She hopes that as a member of the New Professionals programme she can help work to create a more diverse and accessible profession not only for those who work within it, but also for those who use it.
Elisabeth Klindworth, Germany
An archivist by profession, Elisabeth works for the State Archives of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where she is currently engaged with a research project for the optimization of the accessibility of archival records through application of methods and technologies from the field of research data management. Taking up existing processes for description and digitization, the ‘research data management laboratory’ aims at improving the FAIRness of data (FAIR standing for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable data).
In her former position at the State Archives of Baden-Wuerttemberg, she was part of the team in charge of developing and operating a digital archive for Baden-Wuerttemberg called ‘DIMAG’. As contact person at the DIMAG-counselling centre, she was responsible for communicating with and for supporting municipal, university and church archives in Baden-Wuerttemberg, which use DIMAG to preserve their digital records.
Elisabeth holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Archival Science and a Master of Arts degree in Information Science from the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam.
Presently, she is specially interested in the topic areas of digital preservation and research data management.
Francesca Mackenzie, UK
Currently Francesca works at The National Archives, UK as a Digital Archivist. Her role is good fun and very varied, the main tasks being those of the preparation and ingest of digital collections received at TNA and conducting file format research for the PRONOM database. Previously she had a six-month research position looking at ways in which crowdsourcing could be combined with machine learning. Her main interest is in how archives can be made accessible to more people. She enjoys looking at the user experience, and how information can be stored in new and different ways.
Makutla Mojapelo, South Africa
Makutla Gibson Mojapelo was born in the village of Ga-Molepo in the province of Limpopo in South Africa. He is currently working as a Lecturer in the Department of Information Science at the University of South Africa (UNISA). His work at UNISA involves teaching and learning, community development, academic citizenship and research. Makutla Mojapelo is a young academic who has published two articles in peer-reviewed journals. He is also serving as a reviewer for local and international journals. Makutla Mojapelo currently holds a Master’s degree from UNISA and is currently studying towards a PhD in Information Science.
Luz María Narbona, Chile
Luz María Narbona is an archivist with a Master’s degree in the history of science and technology. Since 2017, she has worked on various archival projects in Chile related to the modernization of archives, and scientific and socio-environmental history. Academically, her interests have related to the transformation of data through implementation of new technologies. In particular, she has studied the case of the Library of Catalonia and the impact of the arrival of the first computers in its premises during the 1970s. She also considers archives to be a place for political expression and is, therefore, a member of Archiveros sin Fronteras- Chile (Archivist without borders- Chile) and the Asamblea de Archiveras y Archiveros de Chile (Chilean Archivists Assembly), an association created in the wake of the October 2019 social uprisings.