pam lach

Our #DigitalHumanities disco ball is ready for its first use—a class coming in to the DH Center to workshop their final projects. We’re using a bike light in a mic stand until I can get a proper light 🪩🕺

Before scheduling polls existed, I joked w a friend that the hardest part of dissertating was scheduling the defense. We had a contest re how many emails it would take. Years later it seems just as challenging. After 2 polls, I found the 1 time that worked. Only to realize I'd double booked myself 🤦‍♀️

An embroidery hoop of Zs in various shades of blue and teal in a spiral pattern on starry night fabric. A mix of orange, pink, copper, and clear beads are stitched into many of the Zs

A busy fall semester put me behind w my sleep/insomnia data physicalization. Just caught up, adding 45 nights of sleep & featuring the first decent sleep I ever got in a hotel, courtesy of a travel-sized white noise machine. Just 1 month left to go til I complete this year’s sleep! #DHmakes

SoCal beach at sunset. The sky glows orange over the water

SoCal beach at sunset. The sky glows orange over the water and reflects in the outgoing tide

Walking the beach at sunset is a magical thing

Ooh! And I just remembered we have several karaoke mics (most typically users for Q&As during public talks). I guess we’ve been blurring the lines between classroom/club for quite some time now 🤩

I love this. And since I frequently play music during project work days, this seems a natural progression toward the (night)club model of instruction 😂

I love that! The co-founder of our DH initiative bought this for our center back in 2019. It sat in a box in storage all this time. So glad to finally get it up and running

Every #DigitalHumanities space should have a disco ball IMO. In all seriousness, what better way is there to emphasize the importance of play and infuse joy in our work? 🪩👯

Quick video of the disco ball’s first rotation

A large mirrored disco ball rotates on a motorized tripod in our DH Center.

Proof of concept of the disco ball being lit up, using a phone’s flashlight. The ball casts patterns of light on the tiled ceiling

Years after being gifted a disco ball, our #DigitalHumanities Center is now ready for a dance party (we just need some lights)🕺

😊

A black dog with a light brown beard wearing a grey turtleneck sweater with red and blue stripes rests on a grey patio chair. His head is resting on the metal chair arm, a look of utter bliss on his sleepy face.

After so many days of rain, this little guy is happy to once again nap in the sun

What an honor to share my 1st #DHmakes project w @scholarslab.bsky.social! This is a career high for me. It’s been so enriching exploring the world of data physicalization + critical making. I’ve discovered a crafty side I didn’t know I had AND it’s been transforming how I teach #DigitalHumanities 😍

Omg it looks incredible! I love that you call me a data artist 😍

Photo of a wall exhibit label and poster showing a photograph of Pam Lach's 2024 "Sleep/Insomnia Data Physicalization", a tight circular spiral of embroidered Z's in white and various blue threads, with orange and clear beads, on a black-blue galaxy-ish fabric background. The poster text says "Sleep/Insomnia Data Physicalization / By Pamella Lach (2024) / A yearlong, embroidered visualization of personal data: nightly sleep amounts (thread color) & types of wakefulness/insomnia (bead color)." Exhibit label text in next photo's alt text.

Photo of an exhibit label that says: "#DHmakes Sleep/Insomnia Data Physicalization Pamella Lach 2024 Materials: thread, fabric, beads Methods: embroidery, physical data visualization The photographed embroidery on this poster is a data "physicalization": data visualized via physical means, such as this project's hand-embroidered fabric. Data artist & digital humanities scholar Pamella Lach added stitches throughout 2024, tracking the entire year's data on her sleep & insomnia. Thread color represents quantities of sleep; bead color represents type of wakefulness and insomnia. A 2025 version builds on this method with added complexity & granularity of how data was captured & how those details are represented visually. "#DHmakes" is both a hashtag & a community of scholarly practice. On social media, folks in digital humanities, libraries, academia, and other learning-work who craft or make use the tag to share everything from failed first attempts at new hobby methods, to advanced professional work. Beyond social media, #DHmakes is a community that's published peer-reviewed journal articles, run scholarly conference panels & workshops, hosted a public methodological talk series, built a group project representing many kinds of data art & craft, & more. Read more about #DHmakes & how to get involved via the QR code. Scholars' Lab's Makerspace can help you explore making, crafts, & building-both as means of teaching & research, and for pleasure, advocacy, & art."

Thanks @plach.bsky.social! for letting @scholarslab.bsky.social display a poster of her 1st yearlong data physicalization: embroidery+beading representing her insomnia, wakefulness, sleep over the course of 2024 (check her #DHmakes posts for 2025's version, w/iterated method+data granularity)

Sunset facing southwest. Puffy clouds glow bright pink, framed by various trees in silhouette

Puffy clouds glow orange in the setting sun above the tops of trees

Nothing tops a winter sunset in SoCal 😍

I used to handle interlibrary loans for a public library. ILL is a magnificent expression of the idea that readers deserve books, and books deserve readers. It’s libraries everywhere pooling their resources for the benefit of everyone.

Killing IMLS could have killed ILL.

This is great news. 📚

Resisting GenAI and Big Tech in Higher Education Tuesday 25th November 2025 8am - 9:30am PST | 11am -12:30pm EST | 4pm - 5:30pm GMT | 5pm - 6:30pm CET Virtual on Zoom – REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/4qE27dB Generative AI is permeating higher education in many different ways—it is increasingly embedded in university work and life, even if we don’t want to use it. But people are also sounding the alarm: Gen AI is disrupting learning and undermining trust in the integrity of academic work, while big tech’s energy consumption, use of water, and rapid expansion of data centers are exacerbating ecological crises. What can we do? How do we resist? Come learn about the environmental, social, economic, and political threats that AI poses and how we can individually and collectively resist and refuse. Learn about how some are challenging the narrative of inevitability. Join this interactive discussion with international scholars and activists on resisting GenAI and big tech in higher education. Inputs from multiple scholar-activists include: Christoph Becker (University of Toronto, Canada), Mary Finley-Brook (University of Richmond, USA), Dan McQuillan (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK), Sinéad Sheehan (University of Galway, Ireland), Jennie Stephens (National University of Ireland Maynooth, Ireland), and Paul Lachapelle (Montana State University, USA). This event will be recorded and is co-sponsored by: Climate Justice Universities Union and Climate Campus Network

Resisting GenAI and Big Tech in Higher Education - Tuesday 25th Nov, free registration, great panel, big focus on climate justice. Register here: lmula.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

I keep thinking the *process* of researching is as important as what you discover.

It forces you to consider what impacts and relates to what you are looking for and the context of what you find impacts its meaning.

Knowledge is not a box of cereal that you can just grab a handful of. #KM

Anyone else frustrated w the way univ admin seemingly co-opted the notion of being “values driven”? They love to tell us we’re doing things rooted in our mission/values but that rings hollow to me—corporate speak they deploy instead of supporting meaningful, slow, small-scale, people-centered work

“Prohibited words and concepts: Equity, diversity, & inclusion; anti-racism; Bias; Critical race theory; implicit bias; oppression; intersectionality; prohibited discriminatory practices; racial privilege; promoting stereotypes based on personal identity characteristics.”

This week, I withdrew from a speaking engagement at a public university because they sent me a list of prohibited “words & concepts.” I will not humor this censorship. It does a disservice to the stories I’m discussing & the audience, who deserve unfettered access to information & conversation.

If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features."

There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.

Funny how, in our time of institutional austerity in which our instructional budget is getting slashed, we can’t hire more faculty/staff, and course caps are rising, there’s still plenty of money for AI initiatives 🤔

Happy publication day to possibly my favorite book chapter I've ever written, "Stop Lying to Yourself: Collective Delusion and Digital Humanities Grant Funding"!

Ever notice how once you get one grant, you end up looking for another & do things you never actually wanted? Yeah. It's about that. 🪰🕷️🐴

Reframing Failure in Digital Scholarship - University of London Press Failure is ordinary. From technological failures and computational obsolescence to rejected applications and challenging collaborations, failure is an unavoidable part of any scholarly endeavour. This...

📣 Really proud to announce the publication of Reframing Failure in Digital Scholarship, an #OpenAccess collection of essays co-edited with @amsichani.bsky.social and published by @uolpress.bsky.social that examines the role of failure in #DH and research more broadly

@sas-news.bsky.social

Few things bug me more than higher ed leaders saying that we lost our mission and lost the trust of the public, when we have actually been the target of a decades-long smear campaign by the right wing that worked. The moment we’re losing our mission is right now, in capitulation.

☺️

💯 I can't even

AI is a bubble but by all means let’s create a high-paying administrative position for it 👀

Not my alma mater creating a Vice Provost for AI and Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer 🙃. Bonus: they poached the Dean of the the School of Library & Information Sciences for the position. Tell me again that the new school won’t be an AI school 🫠