Good afternoon, and apologies for cross-posting: I'm writing to announce a series of events that I have co-organized with Thorsten Ries (UT Austin, Germanic Studies) and the UT Austin iSchool colloquium series. The first event has already occurred, but there's still time to join us for the next two panels! We also have a video recording available from the first event (See below). Series Description: This series features international subject expert talks from the libraries and archives sector, a digital investigation collective and from the cybersecurity sector to consider born-digital evidence from a Historical Scholarship and Humanities perspective. Our digital present poses challenges to long-term preservation and curation of born-digital archives, but also to their cautious selection, critical appraisal and methodological analysis and interpretation as historical evidence. Establishing, proving and maintaining the chain of digital evidence, evaluating the evidential status of born-digital sources and interpreting the traces of historical digital events will be the daily practice of historians studying our present time. The talk series Born-digital Evidence and Historical Scholarship is a starter for the conversation about how we establish this practice and build the skillsets, standards and procedures for Historical Scholarship and the Humanities in coordination with libraries and archives. EVENT 1: Aric Toler (Bellingcat) and Charlotte Godart (Bellingcat) Date: April 12, 10-11:30am CST Aric Toler is the training and research director at Bellingcat, an online publication specialized in open-source intelligence. Aric's research including Russian intelligence operations, the war in the Donbas, and the 2014 downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. Aric received his Master's degree in Slavic Languages & Literatures from the University of Kansas in 2013 and has since been working with Bellingcat. Charlotte Godart is an open source investigator & trainer for Bellingcat. She researches conflict zones, breaking news events, and the spread of disinformation. She creates online training material that is available for anyone interested in pursuing digital verification through the Bellingcat website. She also travels globally to teach online verification techniques and methodology to journalists, researchers, activists, and lawyers. Before Bellingcat, she was at the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley. For those who were unable to join us, a recording is available at the following URL: https://utexas.zoom.us/rec/share/rcRVKJKbzOVnck4rjvf5UtXgKM4fnyv0Rr0edmx6W5z... EVENT 2: Euan Cochrane (Yale) and David A. Bliss (UT Austin) Date: April 19, 10-11:30 CST Event: https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/events/256 Registration: https://utexas.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwtceutqz0sH9wBI0GnrcS2PsoP12eCMd_v Euan Cochrane is Digital Preservation Manager for Yale University Libraries. He has a particular interest in software preservation and the use of emulation to maintain access to born digital information. Before joining Yale, Euan helped to establish the data archive for official statistics at Statistics New Zealand, in addition to working in the Digital Continuity team at Archives New Zealand and consulting for Deloitte in Australia on Information Management. David Bliss is the Systems and Digital Archivist at UT Libraries, where he is responsible for a variety of digital preservation infrastructure and processes for libraries collections. Prior to April 2021, he was the Digital Processing Archivist at the Benson Latin American Collection at UT Austin, focused primarily on implementing and supporting post-custodial digitization projects based at partner repositories in Latin America. David is a 2017 graduate of the UT School of Information. EVENT 3: Matthias Vallentin (Tenzir) Date: April 23, 10am CST Event: https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/events/257 Registration: https://utexas.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAvd--urDMrGNWIVyrmeDoSnrQaDwj3mekk Matthias Vallentin is founder and CEO at Tenzir. His PhD work at UC Berkeley about network forensics laid the foundation for the software that Tenzir now develops an open security analytics platform to empower defenders. Prior to founding Tenzir, Matthias worked on high-performance network monitoring to provide security operators with in-depth visibility about their infrastructure. Looking forward to the events! I hope that you can join us. Sincerely, James -- *JAMES A. HODGES, Ph.D.* Bullard Postdoctoral Research Fellow University of Texas at Austin School of Information