I am a PhD candidate in history at New York University where I study the United States in the world during the long nineteenth century.
My area specializations include US immigration, global migrations, and US imperialism. In addition to the research I am undertaking for my dissertation, I strive for a praxis of bringing history out of the academy and into the world through public venues, both physical and digital. To this end, I have worked in education, research, and exhibition departments at major museums and institutions in New York City, and have volunteered as a digital collections and exhibitions consultant for community organizations. I have recently worked as a Data Services consultant for the New York University Division of Libraries where I specialized in Qualitative Data Analysis and Research Data Management.
I currently work as an Immigration Content Specialist for Ralph Applebaum Associates and the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation on the "Reimagining Ellis Island" project for the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration. I also serve as the Digital and Public Communications Coordinator for the Immigration and Ethnic History Society.
New York University • 2018–Present
New York University • 2021
New York University • 2021
New York University • 2017
Aquinas College • 2012
Grand Rapids Community College • 2007
New York University• 2022
New York University• 2021
New York University• 2021
New York University• 2018-2023
New York University• 2018-2023
New York University• 2019 & 2020
New York University• 2014 & 2015
Ireland's Allies: America and the 1916 Easter Rising• University College Dublin Press, 2016
Ireland's Allies: America and the 1916 Easter Rising• University College Dublin Press, 2016
Esferas 12: Migración y Asilo• December, 2021
IrishCentral.com• April, 2017
Irish Times• December, 2016
Edited by Maddalena Marinari, Madeline Y. Hsu, and Maria Christina Garcia; H-Net.org• 2021
By Timothy Egan; The Gotham Center for New York City• 2017
Research and development of content for exhibits at the the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration. • Serve as primary content specialist for all nineteenth century US history and pre-Ellis Island migration history content. • Development of script outline and immigration timeline • Focused research of materials for display (artifacts, images, documents) • Review and provide feedback on script drafts and final script • Functioning in a curatorial role for gallery-specific exhibit elements • Collaboration and coordination with project’s Lead Content Specialist and other content specialists on the development and review of historical content for additional galleries and exhibits. • Collaborate in the development and review of media briefs and media pieces with RAA media team.
Responsible for redesign and development of the IEHS website and digital communications systems in collaboration with IEHS members, board, officers, and external contractors. • Direct ongoing maintenance of the website and communication systems for regular operations of IEHS. • Supported and promoted online events and publications. Assisted in the editing, design, publication, and distribution of the IEHS’s digital edition of its bi-annual newsletter. Oversaw the newsletter’s transition from print to an exclusively digital publication. • Serve on membership and digital projects ad-hoc committees alongside members of the IEHS board.
Collaborative research with the Vice President for History Exhibitions et. al. involving the New York Historical Society's archival collections, external archives, and libraries for the development and execution of public history exhibitions. • Conducted research, wrote reports, provided historical analysis, and engaged in discussions with the history exhibits team.
Delivered thousands of artifact-based tours in a department that led over 180,000 tours on average per year. • Designed and delivered curriculum, live talks, public programs for wide ranging audiences. • Collaborated in delivery of live online webinars for thousands of students, reaching over 200,000 students annually in 2018 and 2019. • Developed specialized programs for high-ranking government and military officials, foreign dignitaries, survivors, families of victims, and other VIP and stakeholder communities. • Trained docents and other public-facing education staff.
Collected, processed, analyzed, and organized metadata for hundreds of oral histories held by Tamiment Library, NYU, in the Archives of Irish America. • Ensured consistency, technological compatibility, legal compliance, and accessibility of archival holdings.
Worked with a team of researchers sponsored by the NYU Humanities Center and the Bennett-Polonsky Foundation’s Humanities Lab (H-Lab) on an extensive investigation into government record-keeping that pertained to US immigration and immigration policy. • Developed and managed Keeping Records and the Golden Gate: U.S. Immigration Control and Pacific Migrations, a digital public history project that stemmed from the H-Lab’s initial research. • Trained and managed undergraduate assistants on the development and maintenance of digital exhibitions, collections, and metadata. • Utilized Wax, a minimal computing system for building a sustainable static websites.
Sourced archival images, organized payments, and collected documentation for image rights, use, and permission in collaboration with Professor Kenny in the publication of The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic: Policing Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century United States (OUP 2023). • Provided copyedits and proofed all footnotes and citations to ensure precision of formatting in accordance with professional standards of the field and publisher.
Primary archival research on the career and life of political revolutionary and intellectual Ernie O’Malley in the Ernie O’Malley Archives at Tamiment Library, New York University. • Transcribed hundreds of handwritten manuscripts, collated archival holdings, wrote reports, and applied historical analysis in preperation for the publication of edited collections.
Collected and collated archival and secondary source materials for Dr. J. Joseph Lee for use in future publications. • Wrote and edited copy for speeches, lectures, and other official and public engagements. • Transcribed oral dictation, lectures, and keynote speeches and adapted for publication.
Provide qualitative data analysis and research data management support to the faculty, staff, and students of NYU through ask-a-librarian chat service, leading Data Services instructional tutorials, preparing training documentation, participating in select projects, and providing qualitative data analysis and data management support consultations for software packages including MAXQDA, Atlas.ti, Taguette, OpenRefine, Git and others.
Conducted interviews with high-profile professionals and public figures. Wrote numerous articles for each issue on topics including politics, history, pop-culture, the arts, and current events. • Additional duties included copy-editing, research, fact-checking, transcription, writing online articles and blog posts, and aiding in the digital publication of bi-monthly issues.
Designed client need-based curriculum and lead programs for intercultural communications, professional development, and foreign language instruction in classroom and corporate settings for a diversity of students of all ages and backgrounds. • Clients included the Federal Republic of Germany, Solcom, DKMS, et. al. throughout the Baden-Württemberg region. • Functioned as a cultural liaison, teaching not only language but also intucultural understanding and communication.
Planned and designed interdisciplinary semester-long undergraduate course with faculty and graduate instructors, cross listed in both History and Spanish and Portuguese departments at NYU. • Co-taught weekly plenary sessions and led weekly colloquia which examined the history of U.S. immigration policy over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. • Led students in developing competencies for the creation of machine-readable and linked open data metadata schemas and optimizing user experience interfaces for building digital public history projects. • Collaborative coursework culminated in an ongoing digital history project, Keeping Records and the Golden Gate: U.S. Immigration Control and Pacific Migrations and a special issue of Esferas, focused on migration and asylum in which faculty, graduate instructors, and students all contributed.
[ For museum education, see also: Senior Interpretive Guide ]
Advised MoRUS archivists on best practices and industry standards for sustainable digital collections and exhibitions using static sites, minimal computing, and long-term hosting platforms. • Built machine-readable metadata to allow searchability and accessibility for collections. • Customized digital exhibitions and collections platform using Markdown, HTML, and CSS. • Trained and oversaw MoRUS’s collections and exhibitions teams on the development, deployment, and maintenance of publicly accessible digital collections and exhibitions, namely the Green Oasis Community Garden/Gilberts Garden Records and Fly Prints Collection.
Supported development of a crowd-sourced digital archive and public history project designed to share and preserve the everyday stories of all people during the global pandemic. • Managed collections acquisitions, supported metadata schema and ontology development, and advised on systems for digital presentation of collections.
Keeping Records and the Golden Gate: U.S. Immigration Control and Pacific Migrations is a digital public history project comprised of a digital collection and exhibitions pertaining to the history of immigration restriction in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. All the objects in the collection come from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and make up files known as “Alien Files” (A-Files), which are the collected documents relating to an immigrant’s interactions with the United States’ immigration system.
US Immigration, Global Migration, Digital CollectionsA selection of documents from the Green Oasis Community Garden/Gilbert’s Sculpture Garden Inc. Green Oasis Community Garden was started in 1981 by life partners Norman Vallee and Reinaldo Arana in response to both the City of New York and landlords’ neglect of the neighborhood. In 1997 Green Oasis Community Garden and Gilbert’s Sculpture Garden legally merged, enhancing the sites’ capability to cultivate community.
Squatters, Community and Guerilla Gardening, LES/LoisaidaThese collage prints are a selection from the Fly Prints Collection at the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space. They feature nine buildings which were part of the larger network of squats in the Lower East Side. Fly, aka Elen Orr, is a graphic artist and squatter who resides in the Lower East Side. Fly’s art often explores the intersections of squat, punk, and feminist communities. She was a fixture at ABC No Rio and participated in the World War 3 Illustrated collective.
Squatters, Art, Lower East Side/LoisaidaMy dissertation examines a cohort of intellectuals, activists, reformers, and politicians who fought against exclusionary legislation and programs of forced acculturation espoused by the proponents of “one hundred percent Americanism.” American presidents, Anglo-Saxon elites, and grassroots activists invoked one hundred percent Americanism primarily in the 1910s and 1920s in campaigns against non-Anglo European immigrants and their descendants. Yet I show how this nativism stemmed from a broader drive for the racial and cultural homogenization of the American population that also targeted Asian and Latin immigrants, as well as African-Americans and Indigenous-Americans. Rather than merely highlighting the story of the under-studied pro- immigrant vanguard at a time when demands for restriction reached fever pitch, I examine the fight against one hundred percent Americanism in its many forms, exposing the strengths of the pro-immigrant position, but also the possibilities that its blind spots foreclosed.
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