Announcing the 2025 CDCS Annual Lecture

We are delighted to announce that Dorothy Berry, Digital Curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, will deliver the 2025 CDCS Annual Lecture on 10 December at EFI. 

Now in its sixth year, the Annual Lecture has become a highlight of the CDCS events calendar. Previous speakers have included Mary Flanagan, Nanjala Nyabola and Aimée Morrison.  Last year's lecture, given by Alex Gil, was the first held in our new home at EFI, and can be viewed online. 

In her talk, 'How Users Imagine Archival Research: JPCA Explore and Digital Curation at the Smithsonian National African American History and Culture Museum', Dorothy will share her insights on the possibilities of digital discovery through her work on the Smithsonian's JPCA Explore project. The platform uses a bespoke metadata schema that invites users to create discovery paths by selecting inter-connected images in the Johnson Publishing Company Archive (JPCA). The JPCA, the largest collection of twentieth-century African American publishing materials, includes a core collection of over 3 million photographs.

This year, the Annual Lecture will be a hybrid event held on Zoom and in room 2.55 at EFI from 16.00-18.30. Those attending in person are warmly invited to join us for festive refreshments after the event. You can read more about Dorothy and her talk here. To book a place, please visit the Eventbrite page here.