Faculty Spotlight: Katrina Fenlon, Assistant Professor
Dr. Katrina Fenlon earned her Ph.D. amidst a sea of cornfields at the University of Illinois, focusing on the intersection of digital humanities and data curation. Working as a project manager on an IMLS funded cultural data research initiative, she became more aware of the deep-seated challenges in working with cultural data – and found her calling. Katrina was drawn to UMD’s iSchool for its strong emphasis on digital curation research, its growing network of leading cultural institutions, and beautiful scenery. Katrina’s role as an assistant professor at the iSchool provides her with the freedom to pursue the questions she is most passionate about and offers an outlet for cultivating the importance and ubiquity of digital curation in every field of work to the next generation of digital curation specialists. Additionally, she directs the National Agriculture Library partnership and leads the “Sustaining Digital Community Collections” project, helping to keep digital collections alive over time, particularly those that live outside of libraries and archives. In Katrina’s free time, you’ll find her swimming, long-distance running, enjoying Nordic noir crime fiction, and parenting two very large dogs and two small cats with very large personalities.