Alicia Peaker is Bryn Mawr’s Digital Scholarship Specialist, and I had the great pleasure of working with her last summer during my Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship. Get to know Alicia and learn more about what she’s up to below!
Photo courtesy of Alicia Peaker
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Education: PhD Northeastern University, BA Eastern Washington University
Past work experience: Postdoctoral Fellow/Assistant Director of the Digital Liberal Arts Initiative, Middlebury College (2014-2016); Lecturer at Northeastern University (2005-2013)
What do you do on campus, and what’s your favorite part about your job?
I was brought to Bryn Mawr to start a Digital Scholarship Program, which means I have the amazing job of bringing together incredibly smart and talented people from all over the college who work at the intersections of academic research and digital technologies. I like to think of my job as creating the conditions and infrastructure through which creative and rigorous digital scholarship can happen. On top of that, I collaborate with faculty, staff and graduate and undergraduate students on a wide range of digital projects—from mapping sherds in archaeological sites in the Mediterranean, to creating digital archives of Chinese propaganda posters, to designing and implementing student and staff-curated digital art exhibitions.
How did you get from your major/minor in college to the career you have now?
Since early in high school, I wanted to be an English professor. I majored in English in college and then went straight into a PhD program for English Literature (note to others: don’t do that!). During my time in graduate school, I watched my professors work very long hours seven days a week, and it wasn’t long before I started to slip into that schedule too. It took many years for me to recognize that this wasn’t a sustainable lifestyle for me. I took about a year, while finishing my dissertation, to really think about what I valued about the work I was doing and what I could let go. I decided that I loved the act of teaching, but wasn’t too thrilled about it as a profession (all that grading!). I enjoyed reading and research, but hated writing (an English major who hates writing!). I loved the collaborative work I did organizing conferences and participating in community organizing, and I wasn’t too keen on the solo research required of humanities degrees. At the same time, a fortuitous new hire in my department encouraged me to explore digital methods for academic research and hired me to manage a high-profile digital humanities project. It didn’t take long for me to realize that not only did enjoy this kind of work, I was good at it, too.
I never could have imagined being where I am when I started college—in large part because careers like mine barely existed. I can’t emphasize enough that taking the time to try out a few different kinds of work—whether through internships, volunteering, campus jobs or informational interviews—can help you discover unexpected pathways to careers you might not know exist.
What’s something people should know about you?
I love to garden, voraciously read young adult fantasy books written by and for women and have watched pretty much every British murder mystery show I can get my hands on.
Why did you choose to work at Bryn Mawr, and why did you choose to stay?
I’ve attended or worked at many different kinds of higher ed institutions—from community colleges, to regional state schools, to large private universities, to small liberal arts colleges. They’re all wonderful and challenging in their own ways. But it was really a dream come true to work at an institution focused on women’s education (and where “women” is a flexible category).
What’s your favorite way to relax? / What’s your favorite method of self-care?
If I’m alone, there’s nothing quite like mollifying my octogenarian tendencies by working on a jigsaw puzzle while listening to an episode of Murder, She Wrote. If I’m with friends, I enjoy a cathartic bout of role playing or, as I like to call it, “collaborative storytelling.” In our most recent campaign, I play a cranky, klepto hedgewitch whose familiar is a transdimensional goat. So, I’m definitely putting my dissertation (on women and the natural world—including witches) to good use.
What are some things you’re up to, and how can we support you?
We’re doing all kinds of exciting things with and for undergraduates in the Digital Scholarship Program right now. We’re creating a 3D historical model of Dalton Hall that contextualizes the experiences and histories of Bryn Mawr women in science. We’re piloting A Domain of One’s Own, where students get their own web hosting space to create blogs, websites, portfolios and much more. We’re hosting communities of learning, including a very popular one on the statistical programming language R. And we’ve founded a selective Digital Scholarship Summer Fellows program, where a small cohort of students work together on a collaborative digital scholarship project. The best way you can support us is to get involved! Feel free to reach out to me for more information.
Thank you for your time Alicia!
If you would like to reach Alicia, you can contact her at apeaker@brynmawr.edu or drop by the Digital Media & Collaboration Lab in Carpenter Library.
Keep up with Alicia via her personal website or Twitter!