Rachel Deblinger

Bio

I’ve built a career facilitating access to knowledge and engagement with historical memory through digital archives, ethical collection building, and open access initiatives.

I’m the Founding Director of the Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) at the UCLA Library, a granting program that funds the documentation and digitization of at-risk cultural heritage materials from around the world. MEAP ensures that global knowledge is preserved and openly accessible through the UCLA Digital Library platform as a challenge to politicized and nationalized historical narratives that minimize or silence multiple voices and perspectives.

In its first eight years, the Modern Endangered Archives Program has funded 200 projects to preserve archives in 64 different countries. During the same period, MEAP received applications from communities in over 100 countries. To date, MEAP has published more than 140,000 unique archival objects, including film, video, audio, photographs, newspapers, ephemera, and more. Through this work, I collaborate with international institutions of all sizes, from grassroots, volunteer-based labor unions to research universities and national archives, to ensure that funds are disbursed around the globe, copyright and permissions are secured for online publication, and archival collections reflect community experiences and local knowledge.

Prior to my work with MEAP, I was the Founding Director of the UC Santa Cruz Digital Scholarship Commons and a CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Santa Cruz. At UCSC, I created opportunities for student engagement with digital primary sources, amplified support for digital pedagogy across campus, and built spaces in the library for innovative research, including the VIZLab for working with Virtual Reality.

I completed my doctorate in History at UCLA in 2014 and am the author of Saving Our Survivors: How American Jews learned about the Holocaust (2025, Indiana University Press). My research focuses on early postwar Holocaust narratives, media technology, and the efforts of American Jewish communal organizations to aid survivors in Europe. I also write and speak about Holocaust memory, digital archives, and post-custodial collecting.

I live in Los Angeles with my husband and daughter.

Focus

  • Holocaust memory and testimony
  • Digital archives and infrastructure
  • Post-custodial collecting
  • Open access and ethical collection building
  • International partnership and grantmaking

Credentials

PhD, History
University of California, Los Angeles · 2014

Based in Los Angeles.

rdeblinger@gmail.com

Download CV (PDF)