My scholarship centers on relationships between people, objects, place, and the past. Drawing on my multidisciplinary training in anthropology, public history, archaeology, education, and materials science, 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 research examines the shifting meanings and values of museum objects. I am particularly interested in plaster casts and other copies and reproductions, using them to investigate questions of authenticity, originality, and historical significance. This work sits at the intersection of museum studies, art history, material culture studies, and archaeology.
My interdisciplinary work in mountain studies explores how mountains are shaped not only by natural processes but by history, memory, and representation. Through studying sense of place, visual culture, and material remains, I investigate how people create meaning from mountain landscapes and how those meanings endure, change, or are contested over time.
My scholarship in teaching and learning focuses on designing, implementing, and sharing innovative pedagogies across museum, university, and high school contexts. Using student-centered, object-based, and experiential approaches, I create and evaluate educational experiences that foster skill development, active engagement, and meaningful reflection.
My earlier archaeological research employed scientific methods to examine relationships between people, materials, and technology in past societies. Grounded in a materials science approach to archaeology that considers artifacts as the products of culturally situated technological choices, this work informs my approach to artifacts, materiality, and museum collections.