My research interests involve history on a human scale: how people interact with their physical surroundings, the arts, and each other.

Current Focus

Blog: On Closer Examination - The stories revealed by looking closer, and the perspective gained by stepping back.

Ann, Martha, Dick, and Dennis - People enslaved by my ancestors, in and around Page County, Virginia, and Woodstock, Connecticut.

M. E. Howard - A New England farmer with a taste for litigation, who also happens to have been my third great-grandfather.

Dudley Pratt - Seattle's preeminent architectural sculptor from the 1920s through the early 1950s.

In the Distance

Anti-suffragists - The women who didn't want the vote.

Independent Women - The women who didn’t marry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Seattle Arts, c. 1950 - Connections between people and institutions at midcentury.

About Me
 

I’m a researcher by nature, driven by a curiosity about people and the arts. Fascination with human interaction has fueled my lifelong interest in genealogy and local history, a practice that fosters both discipline and creativity. My passion for the arts led to a baccalaureate degree in Art History at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where my education included opportunities to travel to France and Spain to study churches along the Camino de Santiago and to pursue independent research on the iconography of a 14th-century Book of Hours.

I draw on these foundational research experiences on a daily basis, sometimes in surprising ways. They informed my stint on Seattle's Landmarks Preservation Board and support my current service on the Sand Point Application Review Committee. They have been the springboard for a career managing academic programs. Bureaucracy and research may seem antithetical, but robust policy development, budget analysis, and strategic planning all depend on gathering, analyzing, and evaluating data—much of it related to the interaction of people. And, of course, they guide and shape my current research projects.

While I have done a lot of solo work, I also enjoy collaboration. If collaborating interests you, or you'd like more information about any of the projects I’m working on, I'd love to hear from you—just fill out the form on the Contact page.

Social Media

One of the things I like best about the modern world is the ability to interact with researchers of all kinds on Twitter. You’ll find a snippet of what I’ve been thinking about lately below—if you have an account, please consider following me!