Patrick Murray-John joined the DSG as Associate Director for Systems in 2018. He came to us from the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, and his experience working on famous tools like Omeka gave him the kindly gravitas of an old-timer. He had fascinating anecdotes to share and also perspectives on all sorts of digital humanities challenges and issues, drawing on decades of hands-on work. Back then we were in our old space on the second floor of Snell Library: a small set of cubicles just off the Digital Scholarship Commons. Patrick’s desk was right by the printer and the supply cabinet, so he got a lot of the sociable traffic from people gathering printouts and highlighter pens and such. His work focused on DSG’s publication platforms and also on overseeing our growing group of developers. He also worked closely with a series of students who spoke warmly about his mentorship and support during their coop. After the pandemic, he moved into the Digital Infrastructure group and his work focused more closely on publication platforms, in particular CERES and Omeka, but he was still a close colleague to the DSG. Below are a collection of our fond memories of Patrick Murray-John.
A word cloud of Patrick’s phrasings would have the word “happy” in big letters–his descriptor for a good outcome. “That would be a happy thing!”, I can hear him say. Words like “bop” and “weird” and “dandy” would also be in his signature list of “common uncommon words.” I had an email from him once, reflecting on an article on Cherokee verbs: “The first example verb seems like what I’ve needed all my life to describe much of my coding: ‘if I go about bumping my head at a distant place’.”
He spoke with affection about his “local”, the pub where he found community outside of work. As a medievalist, he had a place in his heart for scribal practice—the whiteboard by his desk, the stack of annotated code printouts, the sticky notes on work in progress. But he was also attuned to abstract structure and in meetings, when talking about code or project design, his eyes would turn upwards and his gaze would turn inwards to something that couldn’t be literally seen but could be felt in the mind: pathways for data, modules needing connection, structured inputs and imaginative outputs.
Patrick’s hands and words are all over the place in our workspace–documentation, repository commits, design ideas, Slack messages, to-do items. There’s a lot of unfinished work that he thought he would be able to get back to, or that we thought we’d be able to follow up on, questions we were going to ask him next time we saw him. We’ll be pulling on those threads for a long time. His words and code will be there to guide and perplex us and to remind us of a colleague we all miss deeply.
—Julia Flanders
Although I didn’t know Patrick Murray-John for too long before his time away, he was actually one of the first people I met in the old DSG office. He was often in the office and in both the old and new space I enjoyed having his presence in the space. He was always kind and pleasant, and in my onboarding he was quick to reach out to me and made me feel welcome and a part of the group. He introduced me to Code4Lib and was really excited that I was attending for the first time in 2025. I will miss his warm and friendly presence, and working together on various Boston Research Center projects.
—Joel Lee
I only know Patrick for a short time compared to his other colleagues. He was always warm and friendly. A generous thinker, eager to share his expertise and learn from others. When I first me in-person, he gave me a big hug as if we were old friends. I believe that was emblematic of who Patrick Murray-John was.
—Caitlin Pollock
The things I think about most when I remember Patrick are his kindness, the warm generosity he showed with his expertise, and the real joy he took from working with and around other people. Patrick and I connected first when we discovered we were both medievalists who’d found ourselves in DH—some of the last messages we exchanged were about a panel he’d organized at the annual medieval studies conference in Kalamazoo, and how excited we both were to see his panel in the program when it was mailed out. He was unfailingly happy to help with questions about WordPress and Omeka, no matter how busy he was. Patrick was someone who wore his expertise very lightly and was always ready to dig into an interesting problem, especially in collaboration with other people. He genuinely loved working with others and seeing how other people collaborated. I miss working with him, I miss seeing him around campus or the office and hearing his bright voice, and I miss the warmth and community spirit he brought to the DSG.
—Sarah Connell