Who We Are

Director

Laura Estill
Associate Professor of English
Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Digital Humanities

Laura Estill explores the reception of drama by Shakespeare and his contemporaries from its initial circulation in print, manuscript, and on stage to how we mediate and understand these texts online today.  She is author of Dramatic Extracts in Seventeenth-Century English Manuscripts: Watching, Reading, Changing Plays (University of Delaware Press, 2015) and co-editor of Early Modern Studies after the Digital Turn (Iter, 2016), Early British Drama in Manuscript  (Brepols, 2019), and Digital Humanities Workshops (Routledge, 2023).

Associate Director

Margaret Vail
Systems & Data Services Librarian

Margaret Vail is a Librarian and Software Developer with a unique background in both fields. She holds a Bachelor of Computer Science and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University, and currently serves as a Systems & Data Services Librarian at St. Francis Xavier University. Margaret's expertise in both libraries and computer science allows her to bridge the gap between these two areas and provide innovative technological solutions to advance library services.

Affiliated Faculty, Librarians, and Staff

Dr. Katie Aubrecht
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Healthy Equity and Social Justice

Katie Aubrecht, PhD, is a Canada Research Chair Tier 2 Health Equity and Social Justice and Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at StFX. Aubrecht is interested in how digital humanities can be used to support creativity and collaboration within and among health, education, social care and community sectors.

Dr. Morgan Bimm
Assistant Professor, Women's and Gender Studies

Morgan Bimm (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at St. Francis Xavier University, on the traditional and unceded territories of the Mi’kmaq people. Her research focuses on integrating fan studies, popular music studies, and feminist theory, particularly as they relate to the consumption and framing of popular culture, music, and aesthetics. Broadly, her work is interested in the ways that technology and media work together to produce ideas about cultural relevance and gender. Morgan’s academic writing has appeared in Punk & Post-Punk, Flow, Journal of Popular Music Studies, as well as a number of scholarly anthologies. She also serves as co-chair for the Gender and Feminisms Caucus of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS).  

Susan Cameron
Special Collections Librarian

Susan Cameron is the Special Collections Librarian at Angus L. Macdonald Library, StFX University.  Her scholarly interests include Bibliography, Book Studies, Special Collections, Gaelic language and culture, particularly Nova Scotia, and Open access and copyright.  Susan possesses a BA, BEd and M.L.I.S.

Dr. Matea Drljepan
Academic Technologist

Matea Drljepan is the Academic Technologist for Centre for Online Learning & Professional Studies and adjunct professor in Earth Sciences at StFX University. Together with other IT Services staff, she assists faculty in incorporating new technology into their teaching.

Kaitlin Fuller
Scholarly Communications and Health Librarian

Kaitlin is a Scholarly Communications & Health Sciences Librarian at StFX University. Kaitlin joined StFX from NSCC, where she taught in the Library and Information Technology program for the eCampus. With over five years of experience as the Education Librarian for the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Kaitlin is skilled in searching for clinical questions and conducting comprehensive literature searches. She holds an MLIS from Dalhousie University, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of British Columbia. Kaitlin has a passion for teaching and supporting students, faculty, and staff in their research.

Dr. James Hughes
Assistant Professor of Computer Science

James Hughes' research focuses on the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to many domains, including biology, neuroscience, geology, finance, and music. James is principal investigator of the Convergence Lab, an interdisciplinary research group that focuses on AI algorithm development and the application of data science, AI, and unconventional computing to a variety of fields to emphasize different perspectives.

Dr. Rachel Hurst
Professor of Women's and Gender Studies

Rachel Hurst’s research is broadly concerned with the relationships between (visual) culture, embodiment, and power, from the perspectives of psychoanalysis, feminist theory, and decolonial thought.  She is the author of Surface Imaginations: Cosmetic Surgery, Photography, and Skin (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), and co-editor of Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis (Palgrave, 2013).

Asad Khan
Assistant Professor of Marketing and Enterprise Systems, Gerald Schwartz Business School

Asad (MBA, MSc, MEC, PMP, CAPM, CHRP, SAP) is interested in Information Technology (IT), Information System (IS), Data Science, Big Data, Data Analysis. His recent work is “Text-mining and Analysis of the Doctor’s Meta-data and Text-review using Topic-modeling (LDA) Technique." Asad has always been fascinated in researching how businesses take advantage of the use of IT to enhance the overall performance. He is a staunch believer of life-long learning, and is enrolled in the Master of Electronic Commerce (MEC), Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS. Asad loves Canada’s outdoors and travelling. He has been involved with various volunteer organizations.

Dr. Ken Penner
Professor of Religious Studies

Ken Penner's research interests lie at the intersection of computers and biblical languages. He is co-director of the Online Critical Pseudepigrapha, with Ian W. Scott, and co-editor of Brill’s series Digital Biblical Studies, with Claire Clivaz. He just completed a 15-year project: a commentary on Greek Isaiah as represented in the Codex Sinaiticus. Last year he was general editor of the Lexham English Septuagint. Before that, he and Nick Meyer produced an eclectic edition of the Biblical Dead Sea Scrolls. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Biblical Literature and on the board of directors for the Text Encoding Initiative. He is now organizing a group of designers, text digitizers, and programmers to develop a free, unified set of tools for digital work on ancient texts. This comprehensive online collaborative platform is the Toolkit for Humanities Research and Editing Ancient Documents. The acronym THREAD is intended to evoke both connectedness (with texts as woven fabrics and this toolkit sewing them together), and sequence (with the workflow stringing one stage to the next).

Matt Schumacher
Instructor of Earth Sciences

A consummate researcher and scientist with interests in surficial geologic processes and groundwater, Matt applies his passion in these fields as an Instructor in the Department of Earth Sciences at St. Francis Xavier University and consulting as a registered Professional Geoscientist (P.Geo & PGO). Having been dubbed “a scientist with a conscious,” he harnesses his education from the University of Waterloo as a Geographer (BES, 2007) and Earth Scientist (M.Sc., 2010), along with his public and private sector experience, on environmental and geological matters. Matt has an established reputation for innovative solutions based on using spatial analysis and geomodelling to solve complex issues throughout eastern Canada. To further enhance his knowledge and expertise, he is working towards a Ph.D. in Environmental Science at Memorial University of Newfoundland investigating how the uncertainty from a changing climate will impact the availability of potable water resources, extent of flooding events, and infrastructure suitability for coastal rural communities.

Dr. Donna Trembinski
Associate Professor of History

Donna Trembinski is currently working with students and other members of the StFX community to create a database and digitized exhibit of early texts about eye care that were written in Northern Italy between 1100 and 1300.  The goal for the project is to trace how knowledge about eye care was translated in various ways, from theory to practice, from practice to theory and across time and space. She is author of Illness and Authority: Disability in the Life and Lives of Francis of Assisi (University of Toronto Press, 2020).

Dr. Ranke de Vries
Associate Professor of Celtic Studies

Ranke de Vries is the primary investigator for the MMIST project (Medicine in Medieval Irish Saga Texts). This project aims to demonstrate through analysis of narrative material that the medieval Irish made use of the broader medieval European and Arabic medical tradition. She is further involved in two separate collaborative edition projects involving graduate students and international scholars. One of these is a diplomatic edition of the Book of Lecan version of the dindshenchas (a collection of medieval Irish place-name tales); the other concerns an edition of the Irish saga text Aided Derbforgaill, ‘The violent death of Derbforgaill’.

Dr. Kailin Wright
Associate Professor of English

Kailin Wright is an award-winning teacher whose research focuses on Canadian literature and theatre; she works on political theatre, feminism, race, indigenous performance, adaptation, the digital humanities, motherhood, pregnancy, and narratives of the future. She is the author of Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre (McGill-Queen's Unviersity Press, 2020).

Dr. Robert M. Zecker
Professor of History

Robert M. Zecker's research focuses on immigrants to the United States; race and ethnicity; urban history; social movements, and radicalism among immigrants and African Americans. He is the author of four books, most recently “A Road to Peace and Freedom”: The International Workers Order and the Struggle for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, 1930-1954 (Temple University Press). He has also contributed book chapters to six edited scholarly volumes, as well as numerous articles in journals such as the Journal of American Ethnic History; the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association; the Oral History Review; Ethnic Forum; American Studies; the Journal of Social History; the Journal of Popular Culture; and American Communist History. His current research includes a book manuscript on Communist Party workers’ schools, as well as oral histories and a digital mapping project of the International Workers Order, American Labor Party, National Negro Congress, and other organizations of the “Old Left” (1930s-1950s): From Popular Front to Cold War: Bookmarking the Interracial Left.

Current Research Assistants

Ebony Gosselin, Psych major

Emily Hubbard, History Major

Past Research Assistants

Kate Beers, Human Kinetics major, '22

Taylor Carty, Human Kinetics major, '23

Alex Lambourne, English major, '23

Danielle Phillips, Accounting major

Chloe Walker, Public Policy & Governance major,  '22