eLabs & Community Events
Revolutions and Reflections: A Conference for Editing and Recovery Practitioners
August 8, 2026 9:30 am – August 9, 2026 4:00 pm Eastern Time
From August 8–9, the Center for Digital Editing’s eLaboratories will host its first annual conference in Charlottesville, Virginia, under the theme “Revolutions and Reflections.” We invite editors, recovery practitioners, public historians, archivists, educators, students, digital humanists, community-based researchers, and more to join us in discussing methodologies, technological approaches, public applications, and insights gained from editing and recovery work.
Held in the context of the United States’ 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, our first conference aims to reflect on revolution as both a historical event and an ongoing process. Our theme, “Revolutions and Reflections,” fosters discussion on how editions, archives, and research collections shape our understanding of revolutionary moments, and how evolving technologies, methodologies, and public needs are reshaping the editorial landscape.
View the conference program below, or view the PDF conference program. Details about pre-conference workshops can be found on their event page:
- View Camp eLabs (Aug. 3–6)
- View Practical Strategies for Web Accessibility and Environmental Sustainability (Aug. 7, 9:30 AM–4:30 AM)
- View Strategies for Finding Scattered Documents (Aug. 7, 1:00–4:30 PM)
In person registration will be open until August 3. Virtual registration will be open through the end of the conference. Register now.
elabs@virginia.edu
Event Format
HybridEvent Location
Conference Program
Opening Remarks: 9:45–10:00 AM
| Newcomb Ballroom |
|---|
| Coffee and pastries will be provided. |
Session 1: 10:15–11:30 AM
| Newcomb Ballroom | Newcomb South Meeting Room |
|---|---|
| Accessible Transcriptions and Scholarly Editions: Revisiting the A in FAIR Data | Collaborative Editing, Transformative Learning: Student Roles in Documentary Projects |
| Victoria Van Hyning, Ellen Forget, Nicholas Gentry, Raffaele Viglianti | Student Transcription, Archival Authority, and the Dickinson Electronic Archives Elizabeth Dinneny, Jeannette Schollaert |
| Dangerous Harbor: Finding Escaped Unfree People in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake Jessica Taylor | |
| Naval Documents of the American Revolution Christopher F. Minty, Christopher Flores-Bravo, Jonathan Lerdau, Audrey Miracle, Isabella Shealy |
Session 2: 11:45–1:00 PM
| Newcomb Ballroom | Newcomb South Meeting Room |
|---|---|
| Wikidata for Metadata Curation | Extending the Reach of Digital Projects: Connecting with Students and Communities (NOT RECORDED) |
| Dorothy Howard, Robin Isadora Brown, Lane Rasberry | Yes, They Can! Student Interns and Documentary Editing Projects Mark Cheathem |
| Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery Signe Fourmy | |
| Collection-Driven Outcomes as the Afterlife of a Digital Exhibition Jen Hoyer |
Lunch: 1:00-2:00 PM
| NEWCOMB BALLROOM |
|---|
| Sandwich and salad options will be available in the Newcomb Ballroom for all attendees. |
Session 3: 2:00–3:15 PM
| Newcomb Ballroom | Newcomb South Meeting Room |
|---|---|
| Recovering Unpublished Black Fiction of the Reconstruction South: George A. Newman’s A Miserable Revenge | Digital Showcase Session 1 |
| Mollie Godfrey, Mark Metzler Sawin, Ruth M. Toliver, Veronica T. Watson | Mapping Place, Recovering Histories: A Collaborative Digital Platform for Place-Based Historical Interpretation Xiaolin Duan |
| forgingUS Erica Cavanaugh, Anneliese Dehner, Jennifer Stertzer |
Session 4: 3:30–4:45 PM
| Newcomb Ballroom | Newcomb South Meeting Room |
|---|---|
| The Black Women’s Diaries Project | Presenting History through Performance and Play |
| Jennifer Putzi, Sapphire George, Rachel N. Hogan, Ziz Kilmer | Reflective Recovery: Archival Storytelling, Digital Editing, and Public Memory in The Ward – Radical History John W. Bessai, Sandra Creighton |
| Girlbossing the Guillotine: Collective Memory and Liberal Counterrevolution in The Revolutionists Asia Meana | |
| Editing the Uneditable: Recovering “Ye Bare and Ye Cubbe” Through Performance Cason Murphy |
Reception: 5:30–8:00 PM
and
Poster Session: 6:00–7:00 PM
(In Person Only)
| UVA Rotunda, Dome Room |
|---|
| Drinks and light appetizers will be available all throughout the reception and accompanying poster session. |
| Poster Presentations | |
|---|---|
| Identifying the People Enslaved by the Mason Family of Virginia, 1773-1865 David G. Armstrong | Highlighting Narratives of Military Vulnerability and Demographic Complexity in Documents from Florida’s Second Spanish Period (1783-1821) Clayton McCarl |
| Editions to Exhibits: Publishing the Drafts of the Declaration of Independence Christina R. Carrick | Critical Bibliography and the Revolution: Visualizing a Book Census and the Materiality of Lived Experience Jennifer Merriman |
| Social Annotation and Open Pedagogy: Democratizing Student Learning Melissa Chim | The Revolution Remembered: Archival Recovery and the Political Imagination of the New Left Drew Phaneuf |
| Thomas Paine: Collected Writings Scott Cleary | Making an Online Edition as an English Major Capstone Project Christopher Phillips & Bianca Falbo |
| Additional Essential Labor: Articulating the Work of Editing Marlowe Daly-Galeano | Whose Stories Are Remembered? Contextual History and Community-Led Preservation of African American Heritage in Blacksburg’s New Town Toni Pitts |
| America in the Archive: Entangled Narratives and Community Involvement Rachel A. Ernst | Critical Access: Compiling a Bibliography of Nineteenth-Century Raised Print Amanda Stuckey |
| Mapping the Digital Humanities Zoie Horecny & Henry Kemp | James Henry, Victorian Revolutionary: Recovering the Manuscripts of Ireland’s Forgotten Polymath Justin Tackett |
| Recovering and Revising Revolutions by Digitizing Early American Women Writers’ Textual Monuments Melissa J. Lingle-Martin | The Cause of Loyalty: The Revolutionary Worlds of Myles Cooper Peter Walker |
Session 1: 9:15–10:30 AM
| Newcomb Ballroom | Newcomb South Meeting Room |
|---|---|
| Recovering and Prioritizing Community Memory | AI and Editing: A Brave New World? |
| Uncovering Thamel: The Heart of Cultural Treasures Prakriti Adhikari | Ben Brumfield, Cathy Moran Hajo, Charles Welsko |
| Armenian Cookbooks as Living Rhetorical Sites of Diaspora, Memory, and Community Emiliya Mailyan | |
| Archiving at the Margins: Community-Centred Digital Recovery and the Visibility Problem for Early West African Women Photographers Alex Ohmeng |
Session 2: 10:45-12:00 PM
| Newcomb Ballroom | Newcomb South Meeting Room |
|---|---|
| Building Capacity and Community: Models for Collaboration and Sustainability | Exploring the Applications and Effects of AI (NOT RECORDED) |
| From Funeral Records to Newspaper Networks: Collaborative Approaches to Recovering Latino Histories Gabriela Baeza Ventura, Carolina Villarroel | Reconstructing Black Truth: Synthetic Media and the Crisis of Digital Memory Breauna Marie Spencer, Ph.D. |
| History Beyond the Institution: Digital Preservation, Crowdsourcing, and the Future of AI in the Manumission Project Stephen Langeland, Sydney Gilbert | Jefferson County Tuberculosis Clinic Aaron Pahl |
| Small, Local, and Sustainable Digital Editions: Re-editing the Henry Boswell Jones Diary Mackenzie Brooks, Paula S. Kiser | Digital Preservation, Copyright, and Publishing PaiNE Nora Slonimsky |
Lunch 12:00–1:00 PM
| NEWCOMB BALLROOM |
|---|
| Sandwich and salad options will be available in the Newcomb Ballroom for all attendees. |
Session 3: 1:00–2:15 PM
| Newcomb Ballroom | Newcomb South Meeting Room |
|---|---|
| Archives of Resistance: Reading, Writing, and Preserving Revolutionary Histories | Digital Showcase Session 2 |
| Rethinking Revolution and the Postemancipation State in ‘Black Maryland in the Civil War’ William Horne, James Illingworth | Against All Odds: The First Black Legislators in Mississippi DeeDee Baldwin |
| Revolutionary Archives: Leslie Marmon Silko and Almanac of the Dead Abigale Mazzo | Prompting a Public History Website into Existence using Generative AI: The Chinese Red Record Project Kevin Hegg |
| Process/ing: Preserving the Freedom Information Service Library Dr. Christina J. Thomas |
Session 4: 2:30-3:45 PM
| Newcomb Ballroom | Newcomb South Meeting Room |
|---|---|
| Designing Methodologies and Publications to Preserve Form, Feeling, and Contextual Relationships | HMoob Stories Project: Living with and Through Displacement (NOT RECORDED) |
| The Literary Annual as Editorial Problem: Editing Empire on the Parlour Table Katherine D. Harris | Chong Moua, Tommy CheeMou Yang |
| “I Hope It Will Be Understood”: Editing Queer Intimacy in the Seven Sisters Diaries Anne-Laure Sabathier | |
| Welcome to the Party: Thomas Jefferson’s Presidential Dinner Guest Records from Manuscript to Digital Database Merry Ellen Scofield |
Closing Remarks: 3:45–4:00 PM
| Newcomb Ballroom |
|---|
| Join us for these final remarks as we close our first conference. |
