Part librarian, part swamp witch
Libraries, data viz, and digital scholarship
Hi! I'm Kayla Abner and I am a Digital Scholarship Specialist at the University of Michigan. When teaching students about data, I prioritize taking an equity lens by inviting them to consider who created the data, why, and how the visualization might affect their interpretation. I'm interested in:
Some of my selected experiences that I've especially enjoyed.
From 2022-2024, I co-taught the course Nuts and Bolts of DH Project Development with Lauren Cooper at Dream Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. We also taught the course at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) in 2026.
I've integrated the concept of collections as data in my work through projects like the Alice Dunbar-Nelson correspondence network and the grant-funded "Mapping Black Entrepreneurship in Civil War Wilmington" project.
Storytelling with Data: Best Practices for Data Visualization is a workshop I offer regularly at UD. We focus on ensuring data viz is not misleading, using trustworthy data sources, and designing viz appropriately for the audience.
Selected research-related work, including publications and presentations, is below. My ORCID profile also covers my publications.
See my full CV or reach me through the channels below.