Brian Adams

Brian Adams is Associate Director for Technology of MESH Research, where he oversees the development of Mesh projects and manages the Knowledge Commons technical team. Adams has served as lead developer within the College of Arts & Letters at MSU for the last ten years, where he has been instrumental to building numerous research and instructional projects.

Larissa Babak

Larissa Babak is the user engagement manager for Knowledge Commons, where she enhances community outreach and provides user support. She is a graduate of Michigan State University with a Master’s degree in Digital Rhetoric and Professional Writing. She has an extensive background in instructional design, digital marketing, social media management, and technical writing with experience collaborating in arts institutions, non-profits, and business environments. Her academic research interests are educational technology, content strategy, sound studies, writing studies, and the intersections of the humanities within digital spaces.

Ariana Costales Del Toro

Ariana Costales Del Toro is a Graduate Assistant for the Commons, where she works with the community team on CORE Research Spotlights and other social media and community projects. She is a Ph.D. Candidate at Michigan State University’s English Department. Her research looks at everyday forms of queer resistance, refusal, and survival within the Caribbean. Ariana is also a fellow of the Diaspora Solidarities Lab, where she works to map, transcribe, and digitally archive the work of the late photographer Frank Espada, who aimed to capture the Puerto Rican diasporic experience.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Kathleen Fitzpatrick is project director of Knowledge Commons. She is Director of Digital Humanities and Professor of English at Michigan State University, where she also directs Mesh Research. Prior to joining the MSU faculty, she was Associate Executive Director and Director of Scholarly Communication of the Modern Language Association. Fitzpatrick is author of three books, including Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019) and Planned Obsolescence:  Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy (NYU Press, 2011). She was also lead author of the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook (MLA, 2016). She is president of the Association for Computers and the Humanities and president of the board of directors of the Educopia Institute. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Council on Library and Information Resources, and she serves on the advisory boards for numerous projects related to open scholarly communication and infrastructure.

Tianyi (Titi) Kou-Herrema

Titi Kou-Herrema is a Research Assistant on Common’s Tech team. Titi is a doctoral candidate in German Studies at Michigan State University and has been actively involved in e Digital Humanities world. Her dissertation applies structured topic models to analyze media narratives. She is currently working on writing tutorials for applying natural language processing techniques to the Knowledge Commons. In her free time, she enjoys building legos and taking walks in the woods.

Cassie Lem

Cassie Lem is a graduate assistant on the Commons technical team. She is currently a PhD student in the Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering (CMSE) department at Michigan State University. She is advised by Dr. Danny Caballero and is a member of the Computing Education Research Lab (CERL). Her research is aimed at studying how certain aspects of course design affect student self-efficacy in interdisciplinary computing classes. As a student in the beginning of her academic career, Cassie is looking forward to learning from her work with the Commons team to better understand and help shape open scholarship in academia.

Bonnie Russell

Bonnie Russell is the product manager for the Commons, working in close communication with both the technical and the community teams. Ms. Russell is a librarian with a focus on information management, user experience design, and technical project management. She is a core faculty member in Digital Humanities at Michigan State University and serves as the digital strategist for HuMetricsHSS. Most recently she co-authored the OER Publishing Values-based Scholarly Communication with support from the Scholarly Communication Notebook.

Scott Schopieray

Scott Schopieray is Assistant Dean for Academic and Research Technology in the College of Arts & Letters at MSU, where he also serves as Associate Director of Mesh. In his position, he works to support digital infrastructure and methods for teaching, learning, and research across the arts and humanities. His current research areas are in high-impact/high-quality online teaching methods, faculty motivation to teach online, and processes for open digital scholarly publishing.

Ian Scott

Ian Scott is Python developer leading work on the Knowledge Commons Repository. Ian comes from an academic background in Religious Studies and Digital Humanities, and he has held faculty positions at Tyndale University and the University of Western Ontario. He has a longstanding passion for open research and for the potential of web technologies to make scholarship more just and accessible. He was co-director of the Online Critical Pseudepigrapha and is a member of the technical committee for the Distributed Text Services API standard. Prior to joining the Commons team, he developed an eLearning application for students of ancient Greek.

Michael Thicke

Michael Thicke is the lead developer on the Knowledge Commons project. He is a philosopher of science, social epistemologist, and web developer, having received an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia, and a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology from the University of Toronto. Prior to joining the Commons team, Thicke was the developer of WP Museum, a WordPress plugin for managing an online museum in WordPress, which is used by the University of Toronto Scientific Instruments Collection.

Dimitris Tzouris

Dimitris Tzouris is our infrastructure developer. He comes to the Commons team from the American College of Thessaloniki, where he developed extensive experience as an instructional technologist. Tzouris has an undergraduate degree in Computer Management Information Systems and has delivered talks and workshops on educational technology at numerous international events. He has served as a member of the coordinating committee of AMICAL, the American International Consortium of Academic Libraries, advising on social media and learning technologies. Tzouris also founded Global Game Jam Thessaloniki and has served as a member of the TEDxThessaloniki team.

Stephanie Vasko

Stephanie Vasko, Ph.D., is a Senior User Experience Researcher in the College of Arts and Letters Dean’s Office and Mesh Research at Michigan State University. She works with a variety of functional and cross-functional teams, facilitates discussion around design and collaboration, and conducts qualitative and quantitative user research. Prior to this position, she was the managing director for MSU Center for Interdisciplinary. Dr. Vasko also specializes in creating and deploying experiences using emerging technologies (including augmented reality and generative artificial intelligence). She is a core faculty member in Digital Humanities at Michigan State University., where she also currently serves as a member of the Advisory Board. 

Community Student Team

• Morgan Myers
• Zhanna Yakubova