VFP 2.0

Edward Benoit, III is Associate Director and Associate Professor in the School of Information Studies at Louisiana State University. He is the coordinator of the archival studies and cultural heritage resource management programs. He received an MA in History, MLIS and PhD in Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His research focuses on participatory and community archives, non-traditional archival materials, climate change, and archival education. He is the founder and director of the Virtual Footlocker Project, which examines the personal archiving habits of the 21st century soldier in an effort to develop new digital capture and preservation technologies to support their needs. He also is Co-PI on PROTECCT-GLAM, an IMLS-funded project focused on the impacts of climate change on cultural heritage institutions.

Heather Soyka earned her doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh iSchool. Her teaching areas include archives, archival appraisal, research methods, and research data management.

Most recently her research examines the reproducibility of community engagement and other record-keeping factors relevant to the sustainability of structures for research data sharing and reuse. She applies continuum theory and methods to her archival studies research, and has been a member of the Records Continuum Research Group since 2014. She has published research in national and international journals, including: Archival Science, the International Journal of Digital Curation, the American Archivist, Research Library Issues, the Journal of eScience Librarianship and Preservation, Technology, and Culture. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Society of American Archivists.

Before joining the faculty at Kent State, she held a postdoctoral fellowship with DataONE, a project funded by the National Science Foundation that is concerned with open access and use of multi-national, multi-scale environmental and ecological science data. She was previously based at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and often collaborates with colleagues across various disciplines, including ecology, biology, and computer science.