Lisa Kofod …is a writer and producer, they are also a digital humanities student working toward their Master of Arts in the Digital Humanities at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY).  A life-long New Yorker, they were drawn to this project because of their love of New York City history and their fascination with how we choose to remember those who came before.  How do we determine who “deserves” to be remembered?  What do those remembrances look like?  How have these remembrances changed over time?

Their primary roles in this project were site design and testing.  This included working with the developer on which platform to use and what frameworks to apply, creating best practices for the incorporation of digital assets, and testing the site as it was developed.  Their secondary roles were in documentation and research.  Documentation included tracking conversations during the development stage and encouraging the team away from scope creep.  Research responsibilities included working on technical options and scholarly research on a set of war memorials within Manhattan.

Rachel Dixon will contribute to the Reading Rebus project in the role of the Foreign Rebus Researcher, as a budding polyglot with a performer’s knowledge of the common operatic languages as well as French language studies (a generation removed from fluency if a life raft is needed). She is specifically charged with interpreting, assigning interpretation, and discovering rebuses that are not in English, especially those that reflect the rise of the rebus in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. She will also investigate and write essays regarding how language interpretation impacts the ludic elements of the rebus, comparing the rebus to other word/image puzzles. She is excited to (attempt to) solve some rebuses with her network of game/puzzle friends and colleagues. Lastly, she will aid in front-end WordPress development as needed.

Rachel is a student in the Digital Humanities MA program. She received her bachelor’s degree in the humanities with a concentration in literature 📚, with previous studies in  🎼 music performance as a Handel & Haydn Society vocal apprentice 🎤. She has published 📜 poetry and short stories in Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, and The Moth among others, and has a goal to record at least one 🎶 song by the end of 2021🤞🏾. Her side projects include many (now-defunct) WordPress blogs from the 00’s and a print Riot Grrrl zine (Calico 🙀) from the 90’s. Professionally, Rachel has worked on mobile applications 📱, games 🎮 , and websites 💻, often with a focus on applying a “fun” and accessible user experience to many industries 🏭. Notably, she was the lead product manager for 📰 The New York Times Games/Crossword 🧩 portfolio and a game designer on Harmonix’s 💃🏾 Dance Central 🕺🏽 franchise. Her research interests include 🔠 linguistics, 🗣 folklore, 👾 applied play studies, and 🇫🇷 French literature & history; specifically the impact of French colonialism on storytelling and language. The Reading Rebus project is an opportunity to work on several of these interests at once 💪🏾, while sharing findings about word/play to a digital audience.

Joanne Ramadani is a Brooklyn-based information designer, data analyst, and web developer. She is currently a candidate for a Master’s degree in Data Analytics & Visualization at the CUNY Graduate Center. Having graduated from Macaulay Honors College at Baruch College in 2017 with a Bachelor’s degree in English and Political Science, which trained her attention to detail and developed her logic skills, she now uses those skills to build websites, scrutinize data, and create fun visualizations that seek to figure out the best way to deliver information to as many people as possible.

As a member of the research, design, and development teams on Freedom of Speech*, Joanne’s responsibilities include cleaning and processing legal data, providing assistance and ideating visualizations on the design end, and co-building the code structure of the website, including the technical aspect of visualizing content. She is also partially responsible for outreach in tandem with the rest of the core team.