Israt Abedin (she/they)

MA Food Studies, Fall 2024MLIS, Spring 2024

Israt is a dual-degree student in Food Studies and Library and Information Sciences. Their research interests are DEIA in archives and libraries, critical information literacy, and immigration and informal economies in NYC. Since September (2023), she has been working as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Member at NYC Municipal Archives, where she has developed guidelines for inclusive and reparative description. Israt also works to engage communities with collections and increase access through inclusive description projects.

Israt was previously a Dual-Degree Intern in the NYU-TV department of NYU Libraries, where she digitized over 50 hours of video material. With NYU-TV, they also worked on a digital humanities project published on NYU Manifold, that describes the history of archival material in NYU-TV's video collections. They apply critical library and archival research methods to their interests in Food Studies. For her Food Studies Capstone Project in the Fall, Israt will be using oral history and digital humanities tools to incorporate street food vendors into the historical record.