Archives

Sluka, Isabell

Isabell Sluka is a recent PhD graduate in Literature, Cultures, and Languages from the University of Connecticut. Her interdisciplinary research and teaching center on questions of social justice and the politics of belonging, with a particular emphasis on digital spaces and technology. Her main research interests include theories of culture and the public sphere, media culture and participation, media activism, citizenship studies, human rights, and collective memory. Isabell has published work on digital activism and solidarity in international journals and edited volumes, including a recent piece in OpenGlobalRights.
In addition to her PhD, Isabell holds graduate certificates in Media Studies and Gender Equality from the University of Oslo (2013 & 2019), and in Human Rights from the University of Connecticut (2022). From 2022 to 2024, she served as a Graduate Assistant in Digital Humanities at Greenhouse Studios, where she engaged in various projects related to scholarly communication and remote collaboration, most notably NetWorkLab.

Cusson, Elaine

Elaine heads the Administrative Services unit of the UConn Library. She holds a degree in business management and comes to us with over 20 years of experience in customer service, procurement and operations management in diverse environments. Elaine is fluent in English and Brazilian Portuguese, with conversational abilities in Spanish and Italian and is passionate about dogs, horses, and wildlife.

Desmarais, Janis

As the Collections Strategist, Janis collaborates across the UConn community and with external organizations to develop, maintain, and assess the strategies that the UConn Library uses for collection development and management.
She previously served as the Collections Librarian at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts and has had prior roles at various New England institutions including the College of the Holy Cross, Rhode Island School of Design, and Worcester Art Museum Library.
Janis has an MLIS from Simmons College, an MA in Art History from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a BA in Art History from Tufts University.

Brady, Caitlyn

Caitlyn is the Marketing and Research Assistant for the Connecticut Digital Archive and Connecticut Humanities joint initiative, My Town My Story. Caitlyn is a first-year graduate student studying Library and Information Science at Syracuse University. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Magazine Journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 2023, which grants her a unique point of view on the My Town My Story program when used in conjunction with her developing LIS skills.

Twiddy, Anna

Anna Twiddy is a Student Success & Engagement Librarian at the UConn Library. She assists with library outreach programming, information literacy and research instruction, and student success and support initiatives for undergraduate students. Prior to working at UConn, she was the Outreach & Student Engagement Librarian at Illinois State University’s Milner Library from 2022 to 2024. Anna has an MSLS and BA in English and Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an MSt in English (1550-1700) from the University of Oxford.

Breeden, Amanda

Amanda Breeden functions as a project manager and outreach lead for Greenhouse Studio’s Sourcery project. Originally from North Carolina, she has a BA in History from the University of North Carolina at Asheville where she focused her studies on material culture during the Industrial Revolution. Amanda also holds an MS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a concentration in Archives and Records Management. She worked previously at the Forest History Society in Durham, NC, where she processed and appraised the Society of American Foresters Collection in order to prepare it for public use by researchers. Most recently she worked as a Processing Archivist with the Knights of Columbus where she processed new accessions. Amanda also currently works part-time at the New Haven Free Public Library as a Reference Librarian. 

Cresci Callahan, Maureen

Maureen Cresci Callahan is director of Archives and Special Collections, where she supports the team’s mission of bearing witness of the wide diversity of human accomplishment and creativity by providing access to archives. She believes that archives are engines for empathy and provide the opportunity for us all to understand the world differently through the careful study of another person’s life and work.

Maureen is very active in the world of archival standards and is currently part of the leadership team for the national best practices group for archival accessioning. She had been co-chair of the Society of American Archivists’ technical subcommittee on Describing Archives: A Content Standard where she led that group’s effort to revise the core principles of archival description.  She formerly worked as a curator of the women’s history archives at Smith College and as an archival technologist at Yale University, New York University, and Princeton University. Maureen is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the University of Michigan.

Areas of expertise

  • Archival technical services
  • Archives and library standards
  • Metadata management and system integration
  • Archival acquisition and appraisal
  • 20th century US women’s history

Rodriguez, Kenia

Kenia is the Project Manager for the Connecticut Digital Archive and Connecticut Humanities joint initiative, My Town My Story, a program designed to establish, execute, and sustain free and accessible digital community archives for Connecticut’s historically underrepresented populations. Kenia is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in English at the University of Connecticut. Her current research focuses on implementing computational tools and methods to analyze issues of citizenship and gender in contemporary young adult literature by Latino authors. 

Burkholder, Kristen

Kristen Burkholder is Head of Access & Visitor Services at the Homer Babbidge Library on the Storrs campus. She collaborates with other staff to create the best experience possible for library patrons and is always looking for new ways to improve the library’s services. Kristen has worked in academic libraries since 2010 and holds an M.L.I.S. from the University of Oklahoma, an M.A. and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Minnesota, and a B.A. in History from Scripps College. In her free time, she reads widely and voraciously and writes the occasional piece of fanfiction.

Professional Affiliations

 

Publications

  • “Dreaming of Eggs and Bacon, Seedcakes and Scones.” In The Hobbit and History, edited by Janice Liedl and Nancy R. Reagin. Nashville, TN: Wiley, 2014.
  • “Threads Bared: Dress and Textiles in Late Medieval English Wills.” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 1 (April 2005): 133-53.
  • “‘Attempree diete was al hir phisik’: The Medieval Application of Medical Theory to Feasting.” In Social Practice in the Middle Ages, edited by Thomas H. Bestul and Thomas N. Hall. Essays in Medieval Studies 13. Illinois Medieval Association, 1997.