She has focused on building an international community of practice for digital archives and preservation most recently with the development and promulgation of the Radical Collaboration model for working within and across domains.
She was awarded her Ph.D. at University College London in 2009, one of the first to focus on digital preservation with a thesis on technology responsiveness.
Since 2008, she has collaborated with community leaders in South Africa to develop and implement good practice for digital curation and preservation.
[8] The workshops and online tutorial she co-developed has been widely used by practitioners and academic programs since 2003, having been offered more than 60 times since 2003 to attendees from more than 30 countries.
[7] Since 2022 Dr. McGovern is the Director for Digital Preservation Instruction and Practice with Global Archivist LLC a consulting, coaching, and training small-business.