November 2019 – Present

Packed with Potential, Inc.

President, Core Maintainer

My Responsibilities and Contributions:

Incorporated and helped establish Packed with Potential as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit
Designed the brand’s visual identity (logo and style guidelines) and merchandise
Manage the website(s), community forum, and social channels
Edit and publish contributor work, manage research databases, and develop interactive resources
Conduct and write original research
Chair the Anne Lister Research Summit, including planning and delivery of an international live program

Background and Origins

Packed with Potential is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the United States that grew out of a surge of global interest in Anne Lister and the new accessibility of her archive, evolving from a simple book list into a collaborative research hub and, eventually, a nonprofit that now anchors a year‑round program of projects and the Anne Lister Research Summit.

In April 2019, the BBC/HBO series Gentleman Jack dramatically expanded public awareness of Lister and prompted many new readers, researchers, and fans to explore her life beyond what had appeared in print so far. When Anne Lister’s journals were shortly after digitized and a volunteer transcription project launched by the West Yorkshire Archive Service, more than 150 people worldwide began working together to make her five–million–word archive readable and searchable, revealing how powerful structured, collaborative work could be for this material. Within this context, Lívia Labate initiated the compilation of a list of books about Anne Lister, aided by Marlene Oliveira and myself (Steph Gallaway), to simplify the path for people trying to understand where to begin. She quickly recognized that this could become a broader platform for shared research rather than just a static bibliography. New research was exploding, but too often getting lost in fast-moving spaces like Twitter threads or buried inside closed Facebook groups. To make that work easier to find, follow, and build on, the Packed with Potential website launched on 12 November 2019 as a central hub for shared tools and community-built resources. Data trackers, interactive timelines, and other organizing frameworks help turn complex archives and scattered research threads into something navigable, reusable, and easier to build upon. This grew into providing a home for research outputs, including articles, profiles, travel maps, fact-checks, and more. Over time, informal online connections, social media challenges, and scheduled online gatherings for events reinforced that this was as much a community‑building effort as a research platform, paving the way for larger events and more formal structure. As of 2025, Packed with Potential, Inc. became a registered 501(c)(3) organization in the United States, a step designed to sustain this work through grants and tax‑deductible donations while keeping access free and globally available. Guided by an explicit mission to support open, collaborative, and accessible research on Anne Lister, Ann Walker, and their wider circles, Packed with Potential keeps barriers to entry low and welcomes people with varied research experience and levels of digital literacy to both access materials and contribute new research and resources.

Achievements & Impact

Packed with Potential has significantly broadened access to Anne Lister and Lister‑adjacent histories by bringing new research, updated references, and practical tools into a central, easy starting point. Through our projects, both new and experienced researchers can engage with the journals and related resources in structured ways, making a vast archive more approachable, searchable, and open to exploration from many angles. Tools like our journal trackers, interactive travel maps, and timelines have opened up fresh lines of inquiry, revealing new insights into Lister’s reading habits, her self-directed education, and her travel patterns, while also supporting independently authored articles that draw directly on the journals and other materials in her archive. Because most of our infrastructure relies on accessible tools like shared spreadsheets and online documents, participants with varying levels of digital literacy can join in, see each other’s work, and build on it, which has encouraged a culture that prizes inclusivity and mutual support over formal expertise. This approach pairs careful sourcing with inviting formats, including community‑oriented social campaigns such as drawing prompts inspired by Lister’s own sketches or wax seals for #Inktober challenges, in addition to collaborative events with genealogy and local‑history groups, and early virtual gatherings such as the #AnneListerBakeOff, which culminated in a live judging event and drew wider attention from outlets like DIVA Magazine.

This combination of serious research, transparent process, and playful engagement has helped make Anne Lister’s history more visible in LGBTQ+ contexts, local and family history circles, and among audiences who might not otherwise engage with archival research. Guided by values that prioritize primary sources, respectful inquiry, open processes, and mutual care, Packed with Potential deliberately welcomes contributors across backgrounds, languages, locations, and levels of research experience. By relying on simple, shareable tools for structured projects like topic trackers and on narrative formats like story maps and timelines, it keeps participation approachable and collaborative while deepening the quality of historical work as the overall visibility, robustness, and reach of research on Anne Lister and her contemporaries continues to grow.

Anne Lister Research Summit

Hosted by Packed with Potential, the Anne Lister Research Summit emerged from the desire to create a dedicated, welcoming space where anyone interested in Anne Lister could share and develop research together, whether they were academics, independent researchers, or fans newly curious about the real person behind Gentleman Jack. The Summit's primary goal is to bring together people interested in researching Anne Lister so they can share knowledge and develop collaborations, with sessions ranging from workshops and facilitated discussions to show‑and‑tell presentations and panels. It is intentionally free to attend, held entirely online over Zoom, and supported with live captioning and extensive guidance on conference participation so that geographical, financial, and experience‑based barriers remain as low as possible.

In its first year, the Summit drew approximately 350 participants across seven time zones for 31 sessions of in‑depth discussion, demonstrating the appetite for this kind of community space and helping to normalise collaborative, open‑process historical work on Lister. Now, the Summit continues to be shaped through open calls for participation, asking the community itself to propose topics and formats, which keeps the program responsive to emerging questions and new research directions. The event extends Packed with Potential’s core values — elevating Anne Lister, being inquisitive and respectful, exploring in the open, and supporting one another — into a live setting where people can learn skills, test ideas, and form long‑term partnerships around their shared commitment to understanding Anne Lister and her contemporaries.

Project Highlights

Examples to come!

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