---
title: Interdisciplinarity in FOSS
osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/conferences/seagl2021/program/proposals/866
beginning: '2021-11-06T09:30:00.000-07:00'
end: '2021-11-06T09:50:00.000-07:00'
keynote: true
resources:
  internet_archive_identifier: SeaGL2021-Dr_Morgan_Lemmer-Webber_and_Christine_Lemmer-Webber-Interdisciplinarity_in_FOSS
presenters:
- name: Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber
  osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/users/1209
  gravatar_id: c76d19cb8f30e3715c6a74d1eff11f76
  biography: Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber (she/her) is an art historian, avid crafter, and FOSS user and advocate. She recently completed her PhD in Art History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. A lifelong exploration of various handcrafts and media inspired her dissertation research on women and textile production in the Roman empire. Morgan is also interested in the intersection of FOSS and academia, particularly in the context of digital humanities research. She built the original digitization of the William Ramsay ledger as a custom static site generator in Python. She looks forward to doing more digital humanities exploration and community engagement within the FOSS world now that her dissertation is complete.
- name: Christine Lemmer-Webber
  osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/users/1210
  gravatar_id: 6c6bed73e4f16627daa0fed7b258557b
  biography: Christine Lemmer-Webber (she/her) is a long-time user freedom advocate. Her degree in interdisciplinary humanities with a focus on philosophy and ethics has informed her approach to free and open source software and free culture. She is mostly known for her work co-authoring and co-editing the ActivityPub distributed social network protocol. In previous times of her life she worked as tech lead at Creative Commons, co-founded MediaGoblin, started and ran the Liberated Pixel Cup, and kicked off the work on CC BY-SA 4.0 and GPL compatibility. These days her primary work is on Spritely, a project to improve the security of federated social networks and bridge them with virtual worlds. When she isn't programming, she enjoys cooking, sketching, and making ASCII art.
---

Morgan and Chris talk about the skills they've learned in their humanities backgrounds and how those have translated into their work within FOSS communities and projects. They'll then discuss the benefits of seeking out varied skillsets within your communities, the value of looking at problems from multiple lenses, and how to use all of the tools we've got to promote our projects.
