[MEI-L] Music and Digital Humanities: Anna Kijas, 2 March 2026, 'Socially Responsible Digital Humanities during Precarious Times'

[David M. Weigl]

We are pleased to announce a new Distinguished Lecture Series in Music 
and Digital Humanities taking place in the summer semester at mdw — 
University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. The Series will be 
streamed via Zoom, and both in-person and remote participation will be 
free. Organisers: Chanda VanderHart, PhD and David M. Weigl, PhD.

Please refer to https://iwk.mdw.ac.at/music-dh for a schedule and for 
instructions on joining us!

Our opening lecture will take place on 2 March 2026, 17:00 - 18:30 
(Vienna) and feature Anna E. Kijas. Her lecture will explore what 
socially responsible digital humanities can look like in the face of 
environmental crisis, technological inequity, and evolving relationships 
between academia and the public. Drawing inspiration from Bethany 
Nowviskie’s 2014 Digital Humanities keynote, "Digital Humanities in the 
Anthropocene," it takes up her central question, "What are our best, 
shared hopes for DH?," as an opportunity to explore how digital 
humanities practitioners might critically examine their own 
infrastructures, engage meaningfully with communities, and imagine more 
ethical futures. Organized around three interrelated modes of practice: 
Critique + Interrogate, Engage + Empower, and Imagine + Speculate, the 
lecture will provide examples from and examine how digital humanities as 
a field has become increasingly attuned to the material, social, and 
ecological conditions that underlie digital humanities work today.

Anna E. Kijas is Assistant Director of Digital Scholarship and Lilly 
Music Library at Tufts University. She co-founded Saving Ukrainian 
Cultural Heritage Online, an initiative focused on safeguarding and 
preserving the digital cultural heritage of Ukraine during the 
Russo-Ukrainian War. SUCHO received the 2025 Karl Preusker medal from 
Bibliothek & Information Deutschland (BID) for demonstrating “courage, 
solidarity, professional excellence, and the central role of libraries, 
archives, and digital infrastructures in the resilience of democratic 
societies.”

Anna's work is centered on principles of social justice, access, and 
sustainability in relation to digital humanities, historical (music) 
research, cultural heritage, and information studies.
Her recent publications include a co-authored chapter, "Nimble Tents and 
Bunkers: The Role of Libraries in Rapid-Response DH," in The Routledge 
Companion to Libraries, Archives, and the Digital Humanities, a book 
entitled The Life and Music of Teresa Carreño (1853-1917): A Guide to 
Research, and open-access digital projects, including Documenting Teresa 
Carreño and Rebalancing the Music Canon. She has several forthcoming 
co-edited publications, including a volume entitled Performing Arts and 
Digital Humanities: Debates for an Evolving Field in the Debates in the 
Digital Humanities series, Digital Pedagogy in Music & Sound Studies, a 
DLF Digital Library Pedagogy Toolkit, and is co-editing a special issue, 
"Cultural Heritage in Crisis," for the journal Library Trends.

Since 2022, Anna has served as the Administrative Chair of the Music 
Encoding Initiative (MEI) Board. She also served on the Executive 
Council for the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) 
(2019-2023), as founding co-chair of the MEI Digital Pedagogy Interest 
Group  (2020-2024), Editor for the Technical Reports & Monographs in 
Music Librarianship series (2021-2025), and founding coordinator of the 
Digital Humanities Interest Group for the Music Library Association 
(2013-2018).