Cynthia Heider
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cynthiaheider.com
Cynthia Heider
@cynthiaheider.com
She/her. Public historian, data & digital humanist, would-be skee ball champion. Public Digital Scholarship Librarian at the University of Pennsylvania. Views do not reflect those of my employer.

cynthiaheider.com
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👋 Introduction:
I'm an educator and library worker in Philadelphia with expertise in digital projects, humanities data & archives. I'm invested in praxes of care, maintenance & repair. Hobbies include videogaming, watching horror movies, swimming, and knitting. Formerly on Twitter as comebackcities.
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ACLS Digital Justice Seed & Development Grants. (Due to ofa.acls.org by 9:00 PM EST on 11/20/25)

The ACLS Digital Justice Grant program supports projects that diversify the digital domain, advance justice in digital scholarly practice, contribute to understanding of racial & social justice issues.
ACLS Online Fellowship and Grant Administration System
ofa.acls.org
November 8, 2025 at 2:13 AM
If you couldn't attend but are still interested, here are the slides (doi.org/10.17613/89j...) and the one-pager (doi.org/10.17613/fag...) that I created for the session. Thanks so much to the #ByteSizedPedagogy organizers and attendees, and my fellow presenter @kairosdoug.bsky.social!
October 30, 2025 at 5:01 PM
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As DH grows, it’s increasingly important to publish conference papers, but there hasn’t been a clear venue for that.

So I’m thrilled to share this new home for DH proceedings, which will include CHR papers & more.

Thanks to @taylor-arnold.bsky.social for leading this effort!

bit.ly/ach-anthology
October 29, 2025 at 3:39 PM
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Let's be clear: the Trump administration has BILLIONS of dollars available to fund SNAP- they are just choosing not to.

If they don't act, 42 million Americans- including 500,000 Philadelphians- will struggle to put food on the table next month.

This is not a game!
October 27, 2025 at 10:03 PM
Submitting to @kcommons.bsky.social today and so relieved to see that they're asking if genAI contributed to the production of the work. Love to see transparency in a repository like this!
October 27, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Digital history folks, I'll be sharing an assignment that worked v well for my grad students to demonstrate the idea of historical contingency, introducing the narrative tool Twine, & exploring the affective power of pedagogical games. I hope you'll join us this afternoon if that sounds interesting!
One last reminder of the #ByteSizedPedagogy event this week with @kairosdoug.bsky.social and @cynthiaheider.com. They'll be talking about surveillance, privacy, contingency and gaming. Join us this Thursday at 1PM ET online for some free conversations about teaching and learning.
ICYMI we will be hosting @kairosdoug.bsky.social and @cynthiaheider.com at the next #ByteSizedPedagogy session on October 23, 2025 at 1PM ET. Free, open to the public, virtual. Come for your regular dose of fascinating work in digital pedagogy in a discussion-based and informal setting.
October 23, 2025 at 1:42 PM
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🚨 Job alert! UPenn Libraries, on behalf of @digitalscriptorium.bsky.social, seeks to appoint an early career library professional or postdoctoral researcher with a background in premodern manuscript studies for an NEH-funded, 22-month Manuscript Data Curation Fellowship 📜
Manuscript Data Curation Fellow
University Overview The University of Pennsylvania, the largest private employer in Philadelphia, is a world-renowned leader in education, research, and innovation. This historic, Ivy League school co...
wd1.myworkdaysite.com
September 24, 2025 at 12:32 PM
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Join us on Monday 9/29 as we discuss A.I. policies in the classroom at Penn and beyond. We’ll meet in person (Williams 623) with an online option (Zoom link: tinyurl.com/CritAIF25). See you there!
September 26, 2025 at 1:30 PM
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Urgent #SaveOurSigns call for our Philly data rescuers!!

Independence National Historic Park has been flagged as potentially at risk, and we need YOUR HELP to capture photos of the many sites in the park. Check out the full list of sites, and don't forget to send your photos in: saveoursigns.org
Places - Independence National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)
An official website of the United States government
www.nps.gov
September 15, 2025 at 7:15 PM
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Call for applications: Endangered Archives Programme
eap.bl.uk/applicants
For Applicants
eap.bl.uk
September 15, 2025 at 4:37 PM
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@ncph.bsky.social is looking to contract Tribal Engagement Specialist(s) in the first phase of 2 admin histories for Chaco Culture NHP & Petroglyphs NM. The Specialist will ensure meaningful inclusion of Indigenous perspectives for both admin histories. Submit by 9/15. ncph.org/what-is-publ...
National Park Service Projects | National Council on Public History
NCPH-NPS COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT In 2020 the National Council on Public History signed a cooperative agreement with the National Park Service. On this page we’ll be occasionally releasing RFPs or Reques...
ncph.org
August 29, 2025 at 4:09 PM
A successful zine take-and-make event for new student orientation is in the bag 🎉 Obligatory proud mama pic of our little tech and data zine corner:
August 20, 2025 at 8:50 PM
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RDM Weekly Issue 9 is out! 📫

- NIH DMS Plans Lesson Set
- Ethically Making and Sharing Data @cynthiaheider.com
- Creating Psych-DS #rstats Projects @ianhussey.mmmdata.io
- Yoda Metadata Editor @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social
and more!
rdmweekly.substack.com/p/rdm-weekly...
RDM Weekly - Issue 009
A weekly roundup of Research Data Management resources.
rdmweekly.substack.com
August 19, 2025 at 1:06 PM
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Considering this news + the fact that ChatGPT chats are now discoverable on Google, this is is a reminder to stop feeding these tools your personal information.
OpenAI is now working with the federal gov. Since at least May, high-ranking OAI employees have been meeting with the GSA and other agencies to promote the company’s tools, according to documents obtained by WIRED. www.wired.com/story/openai... via @zoeschiffer.bsky.social @willknight.bsky.social
OpenAI Announces Massive US Government Partnership
The ChatGPT maker is providing its frontier AI models to federal agencies for $1 for the next year.
www.wired.com
August 7, 2025 at 9:41 PM
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Bluesky when I make a joke:
August 7, 2025 at 11:00 PM
My increasingly desperate plea doing the yearly website audit: Can we PLEASE, for the love of God, move past the double space after a period. I know you learned to type on a typewriter and I do not care
August 7, 2025 at 7:49 PM
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Check out our zine initiative! Thanks @cynthiaheider.com and @jajrk.bsky.social for such amazing work & our undergraduate student Vicky for her words. We are also integrating these with ScholarlyCommons! repository.upenn.edu/exhibits/org...
www.library.upenn.edu/rdds/work/ha...
Happy International Zine Month!
RDDS recently debuted a tech and data zine rack in RDDSx. Just in time for International Zine Month, learn more about the process and what's next in this blog post from student outreach assistant Vick...
www.library.upenn.edu
August 5, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Sad to see that one of my grad school professors and mentors, Margery Sly, recently passed away. She was a firecracker and a true advocate for accessible and expansive archives & special collections. I learned a lot from her and she will be missed.
August 5, 2025 at 6:20 PM
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I really do think fundamentally less of people who use AI to produce text, and what's more, I'm right.
August 3, 2025 at 8:46 PM
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Our #livestream runs 24/7. But when the microfiche scanning team takes a well-earned break, the feed keeps rolling, with #lofi music accompanying home movies, silent films & other gems from the Internet Archive.

Here's a sample.

Tune in ➡️ www.youtube.com/live/aPg2V5R...
August 2, 2025 at 1:02 PM
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This special issue invites contributors from across the disciplines to share their research and creative scholarship in zine form.
archivespublishing.com/2025/07/31/c...
CFP: Academizines
Dr. Spencer D. C. Keralis and Professor Zach Frazier, editors Call for Proposals We invite proposals for Academizines, a special issue of Unbound: A Journal of Digital Scholarship. Zines have evolv…
archivespublishing.com
July 31, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Loving this series of blog posts on urban history topics from the @urbanhistorya.bsky.social Digital Summer School! themetropole.blog/category/dig...
Digital Summer School – The Metropole
Posts about Digital Summer School written by themetropoleblog
themetropole.blog
July 31, 2025 at 1:52 PM
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This might be my parallax of perspective here, but is there a sort of race/gender divide on how AI is promoted/developed?

Like there's a bit of irony that it's been men who mock the concept of stochastic parroting, but it's been mainly femmes and non-white folks who've been driving the charge.
July 28, 2025 at 6:05 PM
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finding the lost twitter mutuals, that’s the dream
July 25, 2025 at 9:41 PM