I am a public historian, anthropologist, archaeologist, and curator with a focus on how people in the present make meaning from the material culture—art, artifacts, and historic sites—of the past.
Currently, I am an Assistant Professor of History and Museum Studies at the University of Georgia. Based in the Department of History, I am a core faculty member in the interdisciplinary Museum Studies Program. I direct the Museum Studies in Atlanta Domestic Field Study Program as well as the Museum Studies in Italy Study Abroad Program. I am also a Museum Fellow at the Georgia Museum of Natural History, a Faculty Affiliate at the Institute of Native American Studies, and a Teaching Academy Early Career Fellow.
Connect on LinkedIn Download CV
Prior to joining the faculty at UGA, I held positions as the Curator and Assistant Director of the Stanford University Archaeology Collections and as the Cullman-Payson Postdoctoral Fellow in Academic Affairs and Outreach at the Yale University Art Gallery. I have also previously worked as an academic advisor, a study abroad coordinator, a community college chemistry instructor, and a high school physics teacher.
Read more about the interconnected areas of practice that define my professional work.
My scholarship centers on relationships between people, objects, place, and the past. Drawing on my multidisciplinary training, I investigate how people create meaning through objects and other traces of the past, including art, artifacts, historic sites, and cultural landscapes. I am particularly interested in how encounters with visual and material culture shape what we know, how we learn, and our relationships to place and the past.
My curatorial practice centers collaboration and object-centered approaches and is deeply integrated into my teaching and research. Through exhibitions, installations, and digital projects, most developed with students as part of museum training coursework, I have curated materials ranging from archaeological artifacts to photographs to archival documents in order to spark conversations about history, culture, and ethics.
As an Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia, I am based in the Department of History and am a core faculty member in the Museum Studies Program. My teaching is student-centered, with an emphasis on project-based learning and collaborations with museums and archives. I direct field study programs in Atlanta and Italy and integrate museum practices into my on-campus coursework, like co-curating exhibitions with students.
My versatile speaking portfolio spans a variety of academic and public settings and includes invited lectures about my research and curatorial work, conference presentations, and participatory workshops in museum education.