UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — What do artificial intelligence (AI) and Black digital archives have to do with one another? A great deal, according to Christopher Dancy, associate professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering and of computer science at Penn State. Black digital archives are online collections that preserve and document the histories, cultures and lived experiences of Black communities, often centering materials that have been historically excluded from traditional archives. Dancy is part of a multi-institutional team that has received a $750,000 award from Schmidt Sciences’ 2025 Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI) to bring together humanists, archivists and computer scientists from several universities to develop AI systems that can support and expand access to Black digital archives.
In this context, using AI to illuminate the historical record means developing tools that can help surface, organize and contextualize historical materials, such as documents, images and narratives, that are often difficult to find, interpret or connect across collections. By using AI to reveal patterns, relationships and overlooked stories within archival materials, and by using humanities perspectives to shape how AI itself is built, the team aims to create tools that are both technologically innovative and grounded in cultural understanding.
In the following Q&A, Dancy discussed the importance of humanities-informed AI, the value of Black digital archives and the collaborative effort behind this award.
Q: What makes the intersection of humanities and AI such an important area of research right now?
Dancy: We currently find ourselves at an interesting time filled with opportunity with the ubiquitous of AI systems. Research in the area of AI and the humanities has an opportunity to explore fundamental questions on history, knowledge and how we define what it means to be human. If research at this intersection fails to keep a critical view on how we build and use AI systems to explore these questions, the work will only bolster existing problematic systems. Thus, we have a real opportunity to create systems that honor our past and present, while creating pathways towards more liberatory futures.
Q: Why focus this project on Black digital archives? What opportunities does the project create for responsible AI development?
Dancy: All digital archives must be handled with care and a critical eye on how those archives interact with ongoing social structures, but Black digital archives are particularly entwined with histories of pain and joy, of love and hate. Engineering AI systems with Black digital archives give us a real opportunity to critically and responsibly develop new AI systems that can be used to understand digital archives whose situation and context necessitate a particularly nuanced understanding.
Q: How does your interdisciplinary team at Penn State, including your work with the Center for Black Digital Research and the Liberatory Tech Project, shape the direction of the collaboration?
Dancy: We have computer and information scientists, archivists, historians, digital humanists and others who are all working on a team for this project. This interdisciplinary team has meant we are forced to translate the complexity of particular disciplines so that we can all communicate and create new, innovative systems.
The Center for Black Digital Research (CBDR) and the Liberatory Tech Project have both played key roles in creating this collaborative structure and grounding the work in shared values. CBDR brings together scholars across institutions, including collaborators such as Jim Casey, now an assistant professor of English at the University of California Santa Barbara, who was a founding associate director of the center while at Penn State and is a co-principal investigator on this grant. Additional members of the leadership team include Samantha Blickhan of the Adler Planetarium, Tiffanie R. Smith of Lincoln University and Benjamin Charles Germain Lee of the University of Washington.
The Liberatory Tech Project is a research initiative that I direct and that is supported by the College of Engineering and The Human in Computing & Cognition Lab. It has now become one of the core research pathways within CBDR, focusing on designing technologies grounded in social justice, ethical responsibility and the lived experiences of marginalized communities. Penn State’s leadership across the College of Engineering and the College of the Liberal Arts has positioned us to lead this work and to build an integrated research ecosystem that avoids silos and centers interdisciplinary collaboration.
Thanks to the vision of folks like College of Engineering Dean Tonya Peeples, I've been able to bring the Liberatory Tech Project to CBDR with this early funding success. We're excited to continue the work within the Liberatory Tech Project towards new, impactful, liberatory and interdisciplinary research pathways.
Q: How will the tools you’re developing help how scholars, students or communities engage with Black historical materials, and what long-term impact do you hope this work will have on AI and our understanding of Black history and culture?
Dancy: These tools we develop for this project will be a stepping stone towards socioculturally competent, critically developed AI systems that can be used for more nuanced understanding of Black historical materials. The tools we develop will be unique both in enabling a more robust critical understanding of Black historical materials and in encouraging critical and ethical engagement with those materials. Our goal is not to just ensure a broad accumulation of materials, but instead a careful, nuanced accumulation of knowledge that can be critically applied not only the past, but to how we think about the present and the future.
We are mindful of the transformations from data to information, from information to knowledge and from knowledge to wisdom in the work we do. We hope this work will create opportunities and pathways towards critical, socioculturally competent AI systems that lead both researchers and the public to critically understand how Black history and culture shape our present and futures. We also know this work will stand as a beacon for how we may continue to engage with the public in a manner that is meaningful and transformational, while also developing innovative, critical AI systems.