Rebecca Kahn

Dr. Rebecca Kahn serves as an Associated Researcher at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) in Berlin within the Knowledge & Society research group, focusing on shifts in knowledge production. Since January 2017, she has directed collections for the Mellon Foundation-supported Pelagios Project, building linked data connections between historical sources across museums, libraries, and archives globally.

Her research centers on digital transformation in cultural heritage institutions, examining how digitization alters knowledge representation, institutional memory, and ontological structures. With deep expertise in Linked Open Data and semantic annotation, she investigates the evolving identity of museums and archives in the digital age while championing open access initiatives in the Global South, peer learning online, and web literacy frameworks that empower decentralized knowledge creation.

Kahn's scholarly output (2015-2020) reveals consistent exploration of digital heritage infrastructure, with publications spanning cataloguing evolution, national web domain analysis, and research infrastructure development. Her work consistently bridges technical methodologies like geodata integration with critical perspectives on power dynamics in digital representation, particularly emphasizing Global South scholarship and open culture movements.

Her recognition includes:

• Freies Wissen fellow (2018/19) supported by Wikimedia Deutschland, Stifterverband, and VolkswagenStiftung

As Pelagios Project Director, Kahn secured Mellon Foundation funding to develop Recogito—a semantic annotation platform—and leads the DARIAH Geo-Humanities Working Group. Her grant portfolio demonstrates sustained support for linking historical data through innovative digital humanities approaches, with recent projects focusing on transforming services into sustainable research infrastructures.

Kahn actively shapes the digital heritage landscape through the Pelagios Commons network and DARIAH collaborations, fostering international partnerships that connect cultural institutions through linked data. Her work with the Geo-Humanities Working Group establishes critical frameworks for spatial analysis in historical research while promoting decentralized knowledge creation across the Global North and South.