The Digital Transgender Archive—a free, publicly available archive of trans history—will be expanding to Northeastern’s Oakland Campus. A $500,000 Mellon Foundation grant will “allow the DTA to hire an Oakland-based assistant director who will lead the West Coast lab, hire new co-ops and hourly student workers and expand and foster new connections with archives in the Bay Area and beyond,” according to Cody Mello-Klein, who wrote about the expansion in Northeastern Global News.
In 2016, K.J. Rawson (English and WGSS), director of the Humanities Center at Northeastern, launched the Digital Transgender Archive. Although the archive is digital, the DTA has lab space on Northeastern’s Boston Campus, and having a similar space on the West Coast “opens up so many more possibilities.”
The Bay Area is rich with trans history, and Rawson believes having a foothold in the Bay Area is important for connecting with historic sites and conducting new research. The DTA aims to “soft launch” the Oakland lab in spring 2025 and “full launch” the lab in fall 2025. According to Mello-Klein, Rawson is also looking further into the future and hopes to open a DTA lab on Northeastern’s London Campus.
Read more about this expansion here.
