I am a Ph.D. candidate in history at George Mason University who foregrounds visual and material culture methodologies. My dissertation establishes an “aerial visual culture of defense” in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding region, in the WWII years.
Broader research interests include: the visual culture of nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. cities, public history, women’s history, WWII home front culture, and urban history – particularly of Washington, D.C.
Prior to beginning my Ph.D., I worked as a museum professional and am passionate about continuing in that field to share engaging and relatable histories with the public. I have curated exhibitions, managed collections, and done other public history work at various organizations in Washington, D.C. See my Exhibitions page for my curatorial work with the Albert H. Small Washingtoniana Collection at the George Washington University Museum. More recently, I have conducted oral histories with descendants of the Heurich Brewing Co.’s workers for the Heurich House Museum’s Home/Brewed project, and have written grants for that museum.
At GMU I served as digital humanities graduate research assistant at Fenwick Library from 2019 – 2022. I worked on a variety of digital history projects at the library’s Center for Mason Legacies, including the Mason Family Account Book and Black Lives Next Door (BLND). My BLND exhibit, Establishing Black Property in Fairfax, tells the story of how a small subset of Fairfax, Virginia’s Black community came to own property in the School Street Neighborhood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This land became a residential and institutional hub of a thriving, middle-class Black suburb located just 15 miles from Washington, DC, by the 1950s.
I am excited to continue my dissertation research through a Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Predoctoral Fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, for 2023-2024.
