Steering Committee

James Lowry

James Lowry is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, Queens College, CUNY. He is a former co-director of the Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies, where he led the Displacements and Diasporas research project. James is editor of the Routledge Studies in Archives book series.

Obden Mondesir

Obden Mondesir is an Outreach Archivist and Adjunct Lecturer at Queens College, City University of New York, and an Oral Historian working at the Weeksville Heritage Center, a multidisciplinary house museum dedicated to preserving the history of the 19th century Free Black community in Weeksville, Brooklyn, New York. Obden has a dual M.A. in Library Science and History from Queens College and is the recipient of a West African Research Center Library Fellowship and the Citi Center for Culture + Queens Library Fellowship. He has conducted and presented research on several community-based oral history projects that have focused on education, Black joy, and Black-owned restaurants in central Brooklyn.

Jeanie Pai

Jeanie Pai is an artist and archivist from Queens, NY. She has a background in museum programming, and currently supports Digital Collections Services at the New York Public Library. She was previously involved in establishing the Memory Lab at Queens College, and the Covid-19 Project, a collaboration between Queens Public Library, Queens College Special Collections and Archives, and Urban Archive.

Jessica Guijarro

Jessica Guijarro is a master’s candidate at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, Queens College, CUNY, where she is pursuing a certificate in Archives and Preservation of Cultural Materials. A Queens native and Master Composter, Jessica is interested in documenting student activism and building relationships between archives and activists. Jessica is currently the co-ordinator of the Archival Technologies Lab and she is an intern at the Msgr. William Noe Field Archives and Special Collection Center at Seton Hall University. She can be reached at jessica.guijarro90@qmail.cuny.edu.