Kelsey Rydland

Kelsey Rydland, PhD is the Head of Digital Scholarship and Research Data Management and Interim Head of Digital Products and Data Curation (DPDC) at Northwestern Libraries. As head, he is dedicated to leading teams which collaborate directly with faculty and students on research projects. These projects utilize a range of mixed method approaches to data science. Specifically, this team looks to expand the use of AI and data science within social science and humanities research and Northwestern.

In addition to being the Head he also acts as the Interim Head of DPDC where he coordinates the building of systems, projects, products and workflows that support the digital lifecycle for research and teaching. DPDC consists of three teams: digital products (open-source software development); data curation (digital projects, metadata and curation); and digitization (reformatting of archival and special collections). Kelsey also serves as the liaison to Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences.

In addition to being department and interim department head and liaison duties Kelsey is an Adjunct Professor in the McCormick School of Engineering where he teaches a class on geospatial information science (GIS). Kelsey holds a PhD in Public Administration from the University of Illinois Chicago and an MA in Political Science and BA in Environmental Policy from Western Washington University. He was formerly the Data Services Librarian and GIS and Data Analyst for Northwestern Libraries.

The results of Kelsey’s research projects have been published in a wide range of venues, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Urban Health, Annals of Surgery, Journal of General Internal Medicine, BMJ Open, American Journal of Public Health, and Nutrients.