I am the director of Learning & Libraries and the director of the Open Learning & Teaching Collaborative at Plymouth State University, part of the University System of New Hampshire. The Open CoLab is a dynamic, praxis-powered hub dedicated to innovative teaching and learning and a community-driven approach to academic professional development; we focus on instructional design, open education, interdisciplinary learning, and increasing the public impact of the academy.
I grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, where I first fell in love with museums and historical reenactments related to the Revolutionary War. After doing a dual degree in English and Women’s Studies at Brown and teaching high school for a year, I went to Tufts to do my Ph.D. in English, with a focus on early America. My interest was in how we produce “history” through narrative and popular culture, and my research includes work on the Salem Witch Trials in American memory, postmodern redefinitions of the tourist, and simulated environments in contemporary media. In 2015, I produced a tourbook focused on women’s history for Bodie State Historic Park in California, and more recently, I’ve enjoyed teaching at Digital Humanities Summer Institute and Digital Pedagogy Lab. I was an English professor for fifteen years before I moved into the field of Interdisciplinary Studies and helped to develop a radically student-centered pedagogy for Plymouth State’s customized major program. Though I now work with students and faculty across a wide variety of disciplines, I still find that I rely heavily on my Humanities training to help me think critically about the future of higher education, and the ways that we can work together to help make academic scholarship more relevant and accessible to the public. You can find me on Twitter or on Mastodon.