Ashley joined the library as a tenure-track faculty member this past August, just as the busy Fall 2025 semester was getting underway. As a new member of the City Tech community and recent addition to the vast CUNYverse, we thought we’d ask Ashley a few questions to get to know her a little better and to learn more about her role and her research interests. A very belated welcome to Ashley!
Can you share a little about your academic and library background?
Sure! I hold a PhD in African History from the University of Michigan and an MLIS from UNC-Chapel Hill. I initially pursued the PhD believing I wanted to be a professor of history, but a number of experiences led me to libraries. As a doctoral student, I had the opportunity to work with undergraduates as a TA for global history courses; I also had a chance to work on several archives projects in Uganda, where I helped inventory, arrange, and describe a number of government repositories across the country. Both of these experiences–working with undergraduates in the US and archivists in Uganda–really appealed to me, and they helped me recognize new ways to use my training in history to support new scholarship. After grad school, I went on to teach at Bard High School Early College-Manhattan for five years, where I got to design courses in African studies, global history, and world literature. I also spent a year in India where I helped set up a new liberal arts BA program at Munjal University outside Delhi. All of these experiences helped me identify things I really cared about: supporting undergraduates, especially first-gen students; information literacy; collection development and bibliodiversity; and global scholarly communications.
What made you want to become a librarian? Was there any event or person that influenced you?
Being a librarian at CUNY allows me to wear many hats. I can teach and provide reference support; I can work on policy and troubleshoot service delivery; and I can conduct research. Moreover, I get to work with a team, which I find more energizing and interesting than working solo all the time. In my past work experience, I’ve been a full-time teacher, a full-time archival assistant, and a full-time researcher, but librarianship gives me a balance of all three.
In terms of who influenced me: As a researcher, I have visited libraries and archives all across the US, Europe, and East Africa. In every instance, I have had to get support from librarians and archivists who knew their collections and knew how to guide me through them. That certainly shaped my interest in LIS. But I’ve also worked closely with scholars in East Africa and India, and I’ve seen the ways in which global scholarly communications works to marginalize and alienate academics outside North America and western Europe. My interest in LIS as a field of study is really grounded in this recognition.
In a nutshell, what do you do at the City Tech Library?
I am the access services librarian. In this role, I oversee everything that happens behind the Borrow and Return desk. I work with a team that manages course reserves, inter-library loan, CLICS, and regular circulation; we also make sure the stacks are in order. Beyond this, I will soon take on liaison roles and reference service shifts.
What are your research interests? Are you working on something now? Or excited to start something new?
I’m interested in global scholarly communications, broadly. With my background in African history, I’m especially concerned with questions about the production and circulation of knowledge about Africa. My current project focuses on the role that North American academic libraries have played in shaping this circulation. I’m currently writing about an audit I designed and conducted with the African studies librarian at UNC-Chapel Hill, in which we collected data on the nationality of authors and the places of publication for a large sample of the African studies print book collection. Our aim was to gather better data about the collection and to understand whose work has been privileged over time; we are also analyzing circulation data to better understand user demand (perhaps unsurprisingly, we see users tend to choose books from well-known publishers in the global North). One possible application of our research will be to design critical citation workshops and libguides.
Beyond this, I’m very interested in the history of libraries, archives, and publishing in Africa, current opportunities and challenges of OA in the global South, and what AI might mean for all of this.
What books, tv, films, and/or music are you currently listening to?
As a librarian, I feel a lot of pressure to say I’m doing some impressive reading challenge (!), but honestly the world is so nuts right now that I’ve given myself permission to read all the murder mysteries I want. The last one I enjoyed was God of the Woods by Liz Moore, and I’m halfway through Broadchurch.Â
And no librarian intro would be complete without a cute cat portrait.Â
