HomeBlogData Literacy The Pedagogy of Digital Humanities Ethics Statements by Amanda Laury Kleintop June 23, 2026 Share: Section NavigationSkip section navigationIn this sectionBlog Home AI and Engaged Learning Assessment of Learning Capstone Experiences CEL News CEL Retrospectives CEL Reviews Collaborative Projects and Assignments Community-Based Learning Data Literacy Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity ePortfolio Feedback First-Year Experiences Global Learning Health Sciences High Impact Practices Immersive Learning Internships Learning Communities Mentoring Relationships Online Education Place-Based Learning Professional and Continuing Education Publishing SoTL Reflection and Metacognition Relationships Residential Learning Communities Service-Learning Signature Work Student Leadership Student-Faculty Partnership Studying EL Supporting Neurodivergent and Physically Disabled Students Undergraduate Research Work-Integrated Learning Writing Transfer in and beyond the University Style Guide for Posts to the Center for Engaged Learning Blog This blog post shares our transcription project’s ethics statement and how we developed it by working with students as partners. The statement integrates the frameworks of digital slavery studies, library and information science and archives, as well as the ethics of work-integrated learning. About Ethics Statements Ethics statements, or statements of a project’s principles, have become increasingly important and common for digital slavery studies projects. I first learned about them at Enslaved.org’s 2023 NEH Summer Institute, but as a practicing public historian, I was already familiar with similar practices surrounding archival ethics in other fields. In digital slavery studies and Black digital humanities, scholars such as Jessica Marie Johnson (2018), Vincent Brown (2015), and Kim Gallon (2016) have long warned scholars against using archival sources and digital technologies to “reify biased narratives or reduce the lived experiences of enslaved people to sterilized statistical datapoints,” and read beyond the texts and employ new analytical perspectives that imagine the people in the data in new ways, “without violating the boundaries of historical archives” (Eddins 2024). Ethics statements make those commitments clear to collaborators and users of digital projects and guide researchers as they work on the project. Yet, our ethics statement need to be in conversation with other fields. Unlike many digital humanities projects, this one does not yet aim to create a new analytical perspective with, for example, a relational database or website that interprets or visualizes new information from our data. Instead, we’re concerned with earlier stages: the transcription, transformation, and presentation of the data. As a result, when teaching my interns about ethics and while writing this draft, I was also thinking about broader conversations led by librarians and archivists, as practiced by the Society of American Archivists and others (Smith et al. 2021). Librarians and archivists have shifted collection practices from a legal, rights-based framework to a justice-based model, often influenced by feminist and anti-racist practice (Caswell and Cifor 2016). Considering how many archives were built on histories of colonization and stolen cultural materials and knowledge, many global Indigenous communities influence corrective practices; for example, the Indigenous Archives Collective Position Statement on the Right of Reply. Other projects, such as the Colored Convention Project, are influenced by movement organizing such as the Jemez Principles. These examples assert the right of groups, particularly those who were historically marginalized, to respond to, challenge, and change their information and knowledges contained in archival records housed by other institutions, such as libraries and museums, and ask researchers and organizations to build just relationships that encourage accountability. These broader conversations shaped our project ethics towards data accessibility, data sovereignty, and ethical pedagogical and labor practices (Risam 2018; Center for Engaged Learning 2023). Most published ethics statements do not explain the process by which researchers crafted them, but the ideas in this one were crafted in the middle of the transcription work alongside students. As a result, the statement reflects our teaching and learning processes, not only the project outcomes. Together, we thought about how people who don’t have expertise in the humanities or historical archives could use and interpret this data if it were transcribed and freely accessible. Whether we were learning about slavery, the Civil War era, or data management, we realized in the process how important it is to understand the history and context in which the data was created in order for users to understand the data and use it ethically. In particular, students expressed that they wanted to describe the data without accepting the myth that data is neutral or objective, or accepting the creator’s goals–to record freed men for enslaver compensation–in ways that past economics historians have (Fogel 2003). We wanted to be clear about how we don’t want the data to be used, while knowing that making the data accessible places it beyond our control, where it belongs as public record. By describing this didactic experience, I hope to make transparent others’ intellectual contributions to the statement and the relationship between the statement and project practices. I drafted the ethics statement below based on the input of my summer 2025 research interns and my collaborator, Dr. Cora Wigger, who contributed to a discussion about positionality in research (Boveda and Annamma 2023). What you see is based on my notes from that conversation and my experiences working with data ethics in different fields. (I summarized this process in this blog post.) Our Ethics Statement The following statement outlines the principles, commitments, and practices that guide our work with these records. Project Purpose and Ethics We, the researchers and transcribers of records from the US Slave Claims Commission, commit to transcribe, transform, and make publicly accessible these records using a framework of care. We are working with sensitive historical documents created to hear enslavers’ compensation claims for formerly enslaved soldiers. We recognize the role that enslavement, subjugation, and systemic dehumanization of African Americans has had in shaping these documents and the history of the United States. We aim to highlight soldiers’ humanity, capture the historical power dynamics that shaped their experiences, and understand how the soldiers shaped the process of emancipation and the Civil War era. These soldiers’ appearances in this dataset represent only one piece of their life, and by publishing this data we hope to connect this piece to other historical documents and databases where they may appear. Educational institutions and predominantly white universities have historically perpetuated slavery and racism, or often limited access to public records such as these. Our institution, Elon University, is no exception. We commit to making data derived from these public records freely available and accessible through collaboration with Enslaved.org, genealogists, and descendants, so that researchers may connect their names with their stories. Process and Procedures To carry out this mission and ethical framework throughout the transcription and data transformation process, we incorporated the following commitments into our work. We: Learn about the era and historical circumstances under which the documents were created to better understand the people in these records while transcribing the documents or working with the data. Learn about the history of data and racialization, the field of Black digital humanities, and the field of digital slavery studies to better understand how the myth of data neutrality shaped the creation of these records and shapes the creation and use of datasets. We consider how we can work within new frameworks to reduce harm and promote justice. Treat every person named in these records with respect, recognizing their full humanity, despite only witnessing a small part of their story. Are mindful of the language we use to transform the data and avoid dehumanizing categorizations, those that flatten historical context while acknowledging the violence embedded in the archives. Are transparent about the ways that we transformed and changed data from original sources. We note uncertainties and explain our best guesses. We signal for anticipated users the extent and limits of the data to guard against misuse. Reject the use of this data to validate, imply a right to, or claim state or federal compensation to enslavers, which is unconstitutional (U.S. Const. amend. XIV, sec. 4). Recognize that collaboration can help us meet our ethical commitments. We appreciate and learn from our diverse cultural and academic backgrounds as collaborators, students, faculty, and staff. We bring with us our different perspectives and expertise, influencing our approaches to the data and transcription choices (particularly how we transcribed names), all of which affected where we saw power at work in the data. We maintain ethical labor practices that reflect both the educational mission of the institution of higher education we work within and commitments of the project. We emphasize the learning process and encourage students and researchers to explore the documents they’re transcribing, the history behind them, and the implications of the data. We encourage researchers to take time to recognize, ponder, and evaluate any feelings or realizations they may have while performing research-related tasks, as well as reflect on and sit with uncertainty and traumatic histories. Taking this time to have these realizations and experiences while engaged in this work allows for greater understanding of the context of the documents and project. When students or researchers are not working for academic credit or within the responsibilities of related jobs, we pay fair wages. Project leads will work with funders to their best ability to ensure timely payments and respond promptly to any problems that might arise. We credit contributors to the work in publications and other project outputs. We acknowledge what work each contributor did for each publication. These commitments and practices will continue to guide the project as it evolves. We will update them as new information, issues, and research questions arise. Conclusion As they’re presented online, digital slavery studies projects generally use ethics statements to inform their work as it happens. Perhaps incongruously, I drafted this ethics statement after my students completed their work, using my notes from the summer work and ethical frameworks from other projects and scholars. As a project leader and disciplinary expert, I tried to create a space that met my own and my field’s ethical commitments while leaving space for my students to identify the commitments and the practices that were important to them. My hope is that the resulting statement more accurately describes the relationship between the products and the practices of the project and its contributors. If backwards, this process enabled me to engage student reseachers and workers in ways that I would not have been able to do otherwise, resulting in what I believe is a more accurate description of our commitments and their application. Given my inability to find easily-available resources about creating these statements, I hope that sharing this process can also inform others who create their own. References Boveda, M., and S. A. Annamma. 2023. “Beyond Making a Statement: An Intersectional Framing of the Power and Possibilities of Positioning.” Educational Researcher 52 (5): 306–14. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X231167149. Brown, Vincent. 2015. “Mapping a Slave Revolt.” Social Text 33 (4): 134–41. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-3315826. Caswell, Michelle, and Marika Cifor. 2016. “From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in the Archives.” Archivaria 81: 23–43. Center for Engaged Learning. 2023. “Work-Integrated Learning.” Elon University. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org. Eddins, Crystal Nicole. 2024. “Fugitivities and Futures: Black Studies in the Digital Era.” In Computational Humanities, edited by Lauren Tilton, David Mimno, and Jessica Marie Johnson. Debates in the Digital Humanities Series. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Fogel, Robert William. 2003. The Slavery Debates, 1952–1990: A Retrospective. Louisiana State University Press. Gallon, Kim. 2016. “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/9781452963761. Johnson, Jessica Marie. 2018. “Markup Bodies: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the Digital Crossroads.” Social Text 36 (4): 57–79. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-7145658. Risam, Roopika. 2018. “Postcolonial Digital Pedagogy.” In New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy. Northwestern University Press. Smith, Lisa, Jenny Wood, Greg Oakes, and Madalyn Grant. 2021. “Exploring Ethical Considerations for Providing Access to Digital Heritage Collections.” Digital Preservation Coalition. https://doi.org/10.7207/twgn21-18. Society of American Archivists. 2025. “SAA Core Values Statement and Code of Ethics.” Accessed June 17, 2026. https://www2.archivists.org/statements/saa-core-values-statement-and-code-of-ethics. About the Author Amanda Laury Kleintop is an assistant professor of history and a 2025–2027 CEL Scholar. She specializes in the U.S. Civil War, Reconstruction, and emancipation. Her book, Counting the Costs of Freedom (2025), explores debates about compensating former enslavers in the U.S. and profitmaking in slavery. It inspired her historical data and digital humanities project on African American soldiers in the Border States. How to Cite this Post Kleintop, Amanda Laury. 2026. “The Pedagogy of Digital Humanities Ethics Statements.” Center for Engaged Learning (blog), Elon University. June 23, 2026. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/the-pedagogy-of-digital-humanities-ethics-statements/.
