Stephanie Sapienza
This is a Professional Website.
| Home | Writing and Presentations |
|---|---|
| Research | Workshops and Teaching |
| Grants and Awards | Exhibition and Public Humanities |
Research Highlights
Some highlights from my favorite archival and research projects. For a full list, download my CV.
Vision Maker Media Archival Stewardship
In 2025, I began leading a sponsored research consultancy at MITH for Vision Maker Media (VMM), a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting Native American and Indigenous filmmakers and media. The project focuses on improving preservation, discoverability, and public access for VMM’s collection of 500+ digitized films, while developing sustainable systems and workflows that their staff can maintain independently.
Working with MITH research software developer Raffaele Viglianti and VMM’s archival and distribution teams, I’ve led the development of a relational metadata infrastructure using Airtable, integrating a substantial metadata overhaul and enhancement in preparation for hosting the collection in the Aviary access platform. This work also includes developing workflows for reconciling people, organizations, and cultural groups with external authority sources using linked data, as well as using AI-assisted workflows to extract named entities and subject terms from existing documentation.
The project also involves developing documentation and training materials, and establishing sustainable practices for ongoing archival stewardship. This work builds on my previous research into connecting dispersed audiovisual collections through linked data, while addressing the particular challenges of supporting Indigenous-produced media and the organizations responsible for preserving and sharing it.
Sound Submissions Project & Sound Collections Database
Since 2022, I’ve served as Research Director of the Sound Submissions Project, an initiative of the Radio Preservation Task Force (RPTF) associated with the Library of Congress. Sound Submissions works to preserve endangered and historically underrepresented sound collections, particularly those held by private collectors and under-resourced institutions. Using a post-custodial model, we develop collaborative preservation strategies that allow collectors to retain ownership of their materials while expanding opportunities for long-term preservation, access, and public engagement.
My work involves developing curatorial priorities, cultivating institutional partnerships, and designing workflows for preservation and discovery. Collection highlights include the Brooklyn Underground Radio Archive, documenting immigrant pirate radio stations in New York City, and Soul on the Dial, a collection of rare recordings documenting African American radio history, for which I also created an interactive StoryMap.
I also manage the Sound Collections Database (SCD), a national inventory of more than 2,800 historically significant sound collections. I secured funding from the National Recording Preservation Foundation (NRPF) and led its revitalization at MITH, working with research software developer Raffaele Viglianti to restore public access and establish a sustainable technical infrastructure. Together, these initiatives support my ongoing efforts to expand preservation capacity and improve access to overlooked sound heritage nationwide.
Unlocking the Airwaves & Broadcasting Audiovisual Data
This is a project five years in the making, which directly built on my previous work managing the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (see below). The project launched in July 2021. You can read my own personal journey on the MITH website: On Forks and Completion: Reflections on a Five-year Digital Humanities Project.
Before the ubiquity of National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB) was the primary institution responsible for promoting and distributing public broadcasting content in the United States. The NAEB collections, which are currently split between the University of Maryland (audio) and the Wisconsin Historical Society (paper collections), provide an in-depth look at the messages being broadcast to the general public through the rubric of ‘educational radio,’ which predated (and heavily informed) what we now know as public radio, between 1950-1970.
The Airwaves website application virtually reunifies the split collections of the NAEB to tell the story of early educational and public broadcasting, along with curatorial enhancements such as digital exhibits and visualizations. To do this, we used a lot of different strategies from both the digital humanities and archival studies: virtual reunification, linked data, minimal computing, static site generation, and synced audio/transcripts for the radio broadcasts.
The NEH also funded a follow-up project, Broadcasting Audiovisual Data (BA/VD), which expanded this work to four complementary historic radio collections. Completed in 2023, BA/VD used linked data and archival authority records to connect people and organizations across these collections, shifting from a content-centric to a network-centric approach to archival discovery. The resulting website includes a network visualization, seven scholarly exhibits, and documented workflows for connecting archival collections through Wikidata and SNAC.
The Lakeland Digital Archive
Lakeland is a historical African American neighborhood in College Park, Maryland adjacent to the University of Maryland and located less than 10 miles from Washington, DC. Present since the 1800’s, Lakeland established deep roots across generations of families, until a late 70’s urban renewal process forced the removal of 104 family homes, as well as familiar landmarks, to make way for student apartments and the expansion of the DC metro line for city commuters.
The Lakeland Community Heritage Project (LCHP) was born out of a conversation between community members to save the history of their dying neighborhood, with a mission to ensure that the stories of their community were known to new residents and younger generations. The LCHP started as a grassroots efforts to build an archive, and then eventually expanded to take on partnerships at the University of Maryland. Alongside partners in American Studies and MITH, the LCHP has now received four grants, conducted over 100 oral histories, and collected over 10,000 documents, photos, maps, and publications to constitute the Lakeland Digital Archive (LDA).
Throughout my years on this project, I’ve been intimately involved with organizing all of the above materials, including designing a database and forthcoming website which allows seamless exploration of the oral histories alongside the related documents and memorabilia. I also helped organize several community digitization events at which community members could come in and have their materials scanned by the team. The technical team at MITH has employed a minimal computing framework to the launch of this archive online, to ensure that the archive is both sustainable and that the community has input at every stage of the process. I also produced a five minute short documentary to be screened to the City of College Park as part of an ongoing negotiation about restorative justice, which can be seen here.
Alternative Projections
I was the Project Director on a Getty-funded grant project for Los Angeles Filmforum entitled Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in LA 1945 -1980, a historical survey and preservation project resulting in over 35 new oral histories, an academic symposium, a media-rich website and database and a 16+screening exhibition series. The project was part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative showcasing postwar art in Los Angeles.
This project was an all-time career highlight. I got to assemble a dream team Advisory Board of filmmakers, historians and curators; supervise the work of five researchers; travel all over the country shooting oral histories; organize an academic symposium which included screenings, panel presentations, and art installations/exhibits; supervise the curation of screenings all over LA in conjunction with other cultural organizations; and work with the Academy Film Archive to preserve select films and strike new prints for preservation and exhibition purposes. It was a rewarding three years of my life.
The website for Alternative Projections was our final official digital publication about our work which was funded by the Getty grants. There you can see the database of films, artists, organizations and curators which comprised this era of rich artistic experimentation and innovation in the postwar era. Additionally, a book was published about the project, edited by Filmforum board member and advisory board member David James and Filmforum Executive Director Adam Hyman.
Animation Restoration Website
This is an oldie but a goodie. I excitedly just archived several older websites that I published while I was a graduate student at UCLA. This includes my final course project (a website) for the UCLA Moving Image Archive Studies course Archaeology of the Medium, taught by Michael Friend.
The website showcases various early technologies used in animation, and how modern-day animation restoration practice does (or does not) intersect with those technologies. I was working at the Disney Animation Research Library at the time and had access to many folks who gladly gave their time and expertise to give me insight into the processes they employed. Note that those podcasts are not playable/published on the archived site, at the request of the interviewees.
I ended up turning this into a longer paper for a subsequent course (Contemporary Restoration), titled “The Magnificent Umbers: Issues in Animation Restoration.” You can read that here too, if you’d like :).