Transcribe 2026

Jim Casey is Douglass Day’s founding director. He is currently an assistant professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, and he continues to serve as a co-founding director of the Center for Black Digital Research. (DD2017) (DD2018) (DD2020) (DD2021) (DD2022) (DD2023) (DD2024) (DD2025) (DD2026)

Denise Burgher is an English Ph.D. student at the University of Delaware, chair of the Historic Churches and Community Engagement Committee and co-chair or the Curriculum Committee for the Colored Conventions Project. Denise was part of the founding team and served as chair for Douglass Day 2019. (DD2017) (DD2018) (DD2019) (DD2020) (DD2021) (DD2022) (DD2023) (DD2024) (DD2025) (DD2026)

Jennifer Isasi is an Assistant Research Professor of Digital Scholarship in the College of Liberal Arts, and Director of the Digital Liberal Arts Research Initiative at Penn State. (DD2023) (DD2024) (DD2025) (DD2026)

Eden Mekonen is a PhD candidate in Geography and African Studies at Penn State where she also serves on the Douglass Day Community Engagement Committee. (DD2023) (DD2024) (DD2025) (DD2026)

Courtney Murray is an assistant professor of English at James Madison University. Currently, her research interests involve 19th c. African American Diasporic archives and literature and how those texts engage with Black feminisms, space/time, fugitivity, and liberation. She is the Douglass Day Communications Committee Chair. (DD2020) (DD2021) (DD2022) (DD2023) (DD2024) (DD2025) (DD2026)

Gabrielle Sutherland is the Event and Communications Administrator for the Center for Black Digital Research. Gabrielle joined the team in August 2021, and provides comprehensive administrative support, assisting with Center administrative duties and implementing the activities of the office, along with project management contributions on the Douglass Day team. (DD2022) (DD2023) (DD2024) (DD2025) (DD2026)

Dr. Justin Smith is an Assistant Professor of English and Black Studies at Randolph-Macon College and a Research Satellite Partner with the Center for Black Digital Research. His research focuses on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century African American literature, with an emphasis on critical race theory, gender and sexuality studies, and the Black radical tradition. (DD2020) (DD2021) (DD2022) (DD2026)

Eunice Toh is a postdoctoral Research Associate at the Center for Black Digital Research. Her work focuses on nineteenth-century Black ecologies, and she helps out with metadata curation and digital collection building for Douglass Day. (DD2020) (DD2026)