James Neff is deputy managing editor for investigations/projects at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the award-winning author of five nonfiction books.

Neff graduated from the University of Notre Dame and earned a master’s degree in American civilization from the University of Texas-Austin. He was a reporter at the Austin-American Statesman and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and was investigations editor for 15 years at The Seattle Times before joining the Inquirer in 2016.

Neff has edited three Pulitzer Prize-winning projects and was a finalist himself in 2003 for the Seattle Times’ 18-part series “The Terrorist Within,” for which he was the lead writer. From 1994-99, he was the Willard M. Kiplinger Chair in Public Affairs Reporting at The Ohio State University’s School of Journalism and Communication.

As an author, Neff relied on archival materials to write books about Teamsters president and high-level FBI informant Jackie Presser, serial rapist Ronnie Shelton and the Sam Sheppard murder case. Mobbed Up: Jackie Presser’s High-Wire Life in the Teamsters, the Mafia and the FBI was adapted into an HBO movie, Teamster Boss. In The Wrong Man: The Final Verdict on the Dr. Sam Sheppard Murder Case, Neff concluded Sheppard was wrongly convicted of killing his wife in the notorious 1954 case. When Sheppard’s son sued the state of Ohio for wrongful imprisonment of his father, prosecutors subpoenaed Neff’s unpublished research to try to bolster their case. He and his lawyer were successful in getting the subpoena withdrawn. Neff’s most recent book is Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy versus Jimmy Hoffa, published in 2015.

From 1991-2002, Neff was a board member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, of which he also was president. In 2017, he served as chair of the jurors selecting finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting.

Ellen Gruber Garvey is the author of two prize-winning books, The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture (Oxford U P), and Writing with Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaisssance (Oxford UP, 2013). Both look at journalism from the point of view of the reader. Her articles include work on American abolitionists’ use of newspapers as data, the advertising of books, and on women editing periodicals. She has written for CNN, New York Times Disunion blog, Slate, and The Root. She has discussed her scrapbook work on CBS Sunday Morning.

She has received fellowships from the NEH, the National Humanities Center, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the American Antiquarian Society, and held the Walt Whitman Distinguished Chair in American Literature in the Netherlands. She is Professor of English at New Jersey City University.

Na Ma works as the chief editor for ChineseInvestors.com Inc. in New York. She earned a Master of Arts in journalism from IU in 2014.

Ryerson University, Toronto

Dr. Gene Allen had an extensive and varied career as a television news and documentary producer (CBC) and as a newspaper editor and reporter (Toronto Globe and Mail) before joining the Journalism faculty at Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada) in 2001. He is the author of Making National News: A History of Canadian Press (2013), which was a finalist for the Canada Prize for the Humanities in 2015, and co-editor of two volumes of essays: Toward 2020: New Directions in Journalism Education (2016) and Communicating in Canada’s Past: Essays in Media History (2009). He is currently completing a biography of Kent Cooper, general manager and executive director of the Associated Press news agency from 1925 to 1951. Gene has a PhD in history from the University of Toronto. From 2015 to 2018, he was holder of the Velma Rogers Research Chair in the School of Journalism, and he is the founding director (2007-2010) of the school’s Master of Journalism program.

Bielefeld University

Dr. Kirsten Bönker is the interim professor of the history of modern societies at Bielefeld University. She holds her MA and PhD from Bielefeld University in History, Slavonic Studies and East European Studies and Law. She is the author of Brave New World? Watching TV and Political Communication in the Late Soviet Union, forthcoming through Rowman & Littlefield / Lexington Books. Dr. Bönker’s research interests lie in the history of the Russian Tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union. She addresses transnational and intertwining perspectives of the Cold War, the media, communication and the public, consumption and monetary practices as well as urban and urbanization, civil society and local politics. Dr. Bönker’s publications have appeared in the Journal of Modern European History, L’Homme, and VIEW: Journal of European Television History and Culture.

Dr. Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb is a barrister of the Inner Temple and a member of the New York State Bar. He was formerly Senior Lecturer in History at Keble College, Oxford. He is the author of The International Distribution of News: The Associated Press, Press Association and Reuters, 1848-1947 (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and co-editor with Richard R. John of Making News: The Political Economy of Journalism in Britain and America from the Glorious Revolution to the Internet (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Associate director and curator of modern books and manuscripts, IU Lilly Library

Erika Dowell is the Associate Director and Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts for the Lilly Library; she also serves as the Project Director for the Orson Welles on the Air digital project, a joint effort of the IU Libraries and the National Recording Preservation Foundation to preserve, digitize, and make available online all the Orson Welles radio recordings held in the Lilly Library as well as teaching several graduate-level courses in the Department of Information and Library Science.

Her research interests include American history, visual arts, special collections, and digitization of rare books and manuscripts. She was the co-director and author of “The War of 1812 in the Collections of the Lilly Library” (July 2012), a digital project created to recognize the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812.

Erika has served as Section Chair of the Rare Books & Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (2012-2013), as President of the IU Bloomington Faculty Council (2009-2011), and as President of the IU Bloomington Library Faculty Council (2012-2013). She was awarded the William Evans Jenkins Award by the IU Libraries in 2016 in recognition of her outstanding contributions.

Prior to assuming her current role, Erika served as Associate Director and Head of Public Services at the Lilly. She has earned an M.A in History, an M.L.S., a B.F.A. in Sculpture, and a B.A. in French, all from Indiana University, Bloomington.

Metadata analyst, IU Libraries

As Metadata Analyst, Julie Hardesty establishes standards and requirements for discoverability, access, and sharing of digital collections held and managed by the IU Libraries, and works to ensure that these collections are preserved and will remain usable into the future. Her research interests include Linked Data, metadata standards for 3D digital objects, and migration of metadata from XML (Extensible Markup Language) into RDF (Resource Description Framework). Her programming skills include PHP, Ruby, Javascript, Java and stylesheets (XSLT, CSS).

Currently, Julie is a co-Principal Investigator on an IMLS-funded grant project to investigate how libraries can support and participate in the digitization, access, and preservation of 3D and virtual reality resources. She recently collaborated with Jennifer B. Young of Northwestern University to write the article “The Semantics of Metadata: Avalon Media System and the Move to RDF.” Other recent publications include “Transitioning from XML to RDF: Considerations for an effective move towards Linked Data and the Semantic Web.” Julie frequently presents about her work including recent talks at the 2017 Digital Library Federation Forum (“3D Two Ways: Researcher requirements and repository design for three-dimensional objects” with Jamie Wittenberg) and as a part of the IU Libraries’ Digital Library Brown Bag series (most recently “Migration Paths: Charting a route for IU’s digital library collections”).

Julie chairs the Indiana Memory DPLA Metadata/Aggregation Committee, which is the Indiana Service Hub for aggregating resources across the state to share with the Digital Public Library of America. Julie was elected President of the Indiana University Librarians Association (InULA), serving in that role during 2016-17. As a member of the IU Libraries’ Diversity Committee, she helped write the first ever Libraries’ Diversity Strategic Plan(PDF link). Since 2013 she has taught a graduate-level Encoded Archival Description workshop for the Department of Information & Library Science.

A longtime Hoosier, Julie worked for IU for a number of years prior to taking on her current position, serving as User Interface Design Specialist for the Libraries’ Digital Library Program from 2007-2012 and as Systems Analyst/Programmer for Library Information Technology and University Information Technology Services from 2002-2007. She received all of her degrees from IU Bloomington: Master of Information Science, M.A. in Art History, and B.A. in Art History.

Outreach and public services archivist, IU Archives

As the Outreach and Public Services Archivist for University Archives and Records Management, Carrie Schwier oversees the department’s public services and outreach initiatives such as exhibits and social media. She also works with faculty to integrate the Archives’ rich collection of primary source materials into course assignments, enabling IU students to literally touch history as part of their learning experiences.

Carrie presents and writes on primary source literacy, library and archives outreach initiatives, and University history; notable recent publications include the forthcoming book Indiana University Bloomington: America’s Legacy Campus (J. Terry Clapacs, with Dina Kellams and Carrie Schwier, Indiana University Press). She also participated in an Information Literacy Course Grant in spring 2016 to redesign English W350, Advanced Expository Writing, in order to integrate information literacy throughout the academic term. Carrie is active professionally as part of the Midwest Archives Conference, and was elected to the Board of Directors for the Society of Indiana Archivists in 2015.

She holds a Master of Library Science with a specialization in Archives & Records Management, and her Master of Arts in Art History from Indiana University Bloomington; Carrie earned her Bachelor of Arts in Art History at Hanover College.