Meet the Team: Dr. Kim Gallon
This month, we're featuring Dr. Kim Gallon, founder of the Black Press Research Collective, COVID Black, and the Black Health Heritage Data Lab in the Black Beyond Data ecosystem.
Who are you and what do you do with LifexCode?
Dr. Kim Gallon, Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Brown. I run the Black Health Heritage Data Lab at Brown University.
Tell us about your lab or project and why it is digital humanities against enclosure.
The BHHD lab uses theoretical and practical frameworks in Africana/Black Studies, the Black digital humanities, critical data studies, data science, health informatics, and the humanities, among other fields to create approaches that seek to mitigate data-driven harm done by algorithmic bias in digital health care and health informatics. Equally important, the BHHD lab team draws on Black history and contemporary Black lived experiences to support Black community-lead solutions to health inequity in Providence and Pawtucket.
The BHHD Lab engages in DH against enclosure by respecting the “right of refusal” in Black communities…the refusal to share their lives and experiences in healthcare.
What is one piece of media (text, art, music, really anything) that inspires your work?
The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde
What DH tools, methods, or theories do you recommend for folks exploring digital humanities against enclosure?
Digital Storytelling tools such as TheirStory, ARCGis StoryMaps, and Rise in the Articulate program and methods such as Black digital practice, that includes oral history helps my team and me create Black DH projects against enclosure.
What do you like to do in your free time or how do you recharge? We prioritize rest as part of our decolonial praxis.
Hike with my 17-year-old daughter.
See more at Dr. Gallon’s Researchers@Brown profile.
Follow her on X/Twitter.