Our Team

Jeffrey Shenton is Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. He teaches courses in cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, environmental anthropology, the anthropology of violence, the anthropology of tourism, the anthropology of religion, oral history, and writing. His published research has examined the language and cognition of space and the environment in an Amazonian Kichwa community in Napo, Ecuador, and a Tzotzil Maya community in Chiapas, Mexico. Jeff is deeply interested in the way that language frames understandings of and motivations toward action in the natural world. He received his PhD in Anthropology from Vanderbilt University in 2014.

Andrew Patrick received his B.A. in History and Philosophy from Centre College and his MA and PhD in History from the University of Kentucky. While completing his graduate studies, he worked at the Kentucky Historical Society, first as an editorial assistant for the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society and later in community engagement where he administered the Kentucky Historical Marker program. In 2017, he returned to Centre to join the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) where he provides pedagogical support to faculty who incorporate community-engaged and experiential learning in their courses and began teaching in the History program. He teaches courses on Kentucky History, Public History, and American History before 1877.

Leslie Collins is an Assistant Professor in the Behavioral Sciences Department at Fisk University. She has experience in assisting community residents and activist organizations in conducting community-based research methods. She received her PhD in Community Research and Action from Vanderbilt University in 2012. Her research interests primarily focus on using community-based research methodologies (e.g., participatory action research [PAR], community based participatory research (CBPR) and action research) and mixed method case study design to examine community health and wellbeing.

Katie Burnett is an associate professor of English and the coordinator of the English and Gender Studies programs at Fisk University in Nashville, TN. She is the author of Cavaliers and Economists: Global Capitalism and the Development of Southern Literature, 1820-1860 (LSU P, 2019) and co-editor of the forthcoming essay collection, The Tacky South (LSU P, 2022). Her work has appeared in the Cambridge History of the Literature of the U.S. South, the essay collection Southern Comforts, PMLA, College Literature, and the Southern Literary Journal.

Shan-Estelle Brown, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Coordinator of the Global Health Program at Rollins College. Previously, she was Postdoctoral Research Associate in the AIDS Program at Yale School of Medicine. She is the author of Writing in Anthropology: A Brief Guide (Oxford University Press). She is a mixed-methods medical anthropologist conducting community-engaged research, improving medical technologies, understanding patients’ perceptions of risk and wellbeing, and identifying structural facilitators and barriers to access and retention in healthcare.

Hannah Ewing is Associate Professor of History, and currently department chair and an Arthur Vining Davis fellow. Her research focuses on the Byzantine Empire and high medieval Mediterranean, and she has published articles on cultural and religious history. She comes to this project via applied history, both as part of teaching the History senior capstone course at Rollins and having previously overseen historical internships, led students on historical field-study, and worked an archaeological dig in Greece.

Rachel Walton is a librarian and archivist at Rollins College who works with patrons from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds to support the research and learning of the college and community. In this role Rachel acquires, preserves, and provides access to historic resources of long-term and special significance, in both print and digital formats, and this places her in Rollins classrooms and in community research contexts on a regular basis. Rachel’s own research interests include web usability, data literacy, and digital humanities, and she has been a proud partner of several ACS Diversity Grants and Innovative Instruction Grants since 2015.

Alexandra Byrum is the director of communications and community relations for Equity & Community at the University of Richmond, where she has served for 10 years. Alongside colleagues in the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) and across campus, she has worked to promote civic engagement, deepen community partnerships, support community-based learning classes, mentor students, and collaborate with students, faculty, and community partners on public exhibitions. Previously, she was a museum educator at the Chrysler Museum of Art and taught the history of photography at Old Dominion University and Tidewater Community College’s Visual Arts Center. She was associate marketing manager at the Smithsonian Institution during the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian and the reopening of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. She holds a B.A. with honors in English from the University of the South and an M.A. in art and museum studies from Georgetown University.

Laura Browder is the Tyler and Alice Haynes Professor of American Studies at the University of Richmond and is the writer and executive producer of the PBS documentary The Reconstruction of Asa Carter, based on her book Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities. Her most recent book, based on the traveling exhibition of the same name, is When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Women Combat Veterans, with photographs by Sascha Pflaeging, for which she interviewed 52 women from all branches of the military. She is currently working on a biography of her grandfather, Communist Party leader Earl Browder.

Patricia Herrera is an Associate Professor of Theater affiliated with American Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies programs at the University of Richmond. She is the author of the book Nuyorican Feminist Performances: From the Café to Hip Hop Theater (University of Michigan Press, 2020). Since 2011 Dr. Herrera has engaged with the greater Richmond community on a public humanities project entitled “Civil Rights and Education in Richmond, Virginia: A Documentary Theater Project,” which has led to the creation of a digital archive—The Fight for Knowledge, as well as three community exhibitions at The Valentine Museum—Made in Church Hill (2015), Nuestras Historias: Latinos in Richmond (2017) and Voices from Richmond’s Hidden Epidemic (2019-2020) and a series of seven docudramas about gentrification, educational disparities, HIV/AIDS, segregation and Latinos in Richmond.

Tiffany Momon is an Assistant Professor of History at Sewanee and affiliated with the Roberson Project. She is a publicly engaged scholar with years of experience participating in the preservation of community histories. Her work has taken her throughout the southeast, organizing community based historic preservation projects in locations such as Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the Alabama black belt, and the Kentucky segments of the Trail of Tears. Momon practices the “boots on the ground” methodology of public history and historic preservation by traveling to the locations where history occurred to meet with community groups and establish reciprocal partnerships. Additionally, Momon actively works towards connecting communities and their histories with the larger public through the use of public programs, museum exhibitions, and the publication and production of interpretive markers, walking and driving tours, heritage development plans, and historic resource reports. Momon has collaborated on over thirty public history projects for institutions small and large such as the Kentucky Chapter of the Trail of Tears Association, Dunbar Rosenwald Foundation of Loudon, Tennessee, Townsend Cultural Center of Winchester, Tennessee, Triad Cultural Arts of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the National Park Service, the Alabama Historical Commission, the City of Memphis, Tennessee Division of Housing and Community Development, and the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area.

Woody Register is Francis S. Houghteling Professor of American History at Sewanee and director of its Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation since 2017. A graduate of Sewanee (1980), he received his doctorate in history from Brown University. The Roberson Project has won grant support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Associated Colleges of the South, the Council of Independent Colleges, the Southern Historical Collection of the Wilson Library of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and the Jessie Ball duPont Fund. Register’s research ranges widely in the history of popular culture, gender, consumer culture, business, and social welfare in the early twentieth century.In addition to his recent work for the Roberson Project, his current research concerns the history of friendship, social reform, and masculinity, which he examines through a history of the lives of four boys — “street toughs” — who in the 1890s were “rescued” from the slums of New York City and put through the George Junior Republic, a juvenile reform program near Ithaca, New York. This research has appeared in Rethinking History, the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, and in his edited volume of The Muckers: A Narrative of the Crapshooters Club (Syracuse University Press, 2017), a long-lost autobiographical account of the gritty world of street boys in 1890s New York City. His earlier work includes The Kid of Coney Island: Fred Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements (Oxford, 2001) and a textbook reader, Crosscurrents in American Culture (with Bruce Dorsey, Houghton Mifflin, 2009).

Sascha Goluboff is the Director of the Office of Community-Based Learning at Washington and Lee University and a Professor of Cultural Anthropology. She holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MFA in Writing (Fiction) from Pacific University. She also completed instructor training through the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. She has published scholarship on race, ethnicity, and religion in the former Soviet Union and Virginia, as well as short stories ranging from comedy to historical fiction. Her research interests also include gender, sexuality, and community-engagement practices and pedagogies.

N.Y. Nathiri has worked in the field of historic preservation for more than three decades, all of that time having been spent on behalf of her hometown, Eatonville, Florida, which Zora Neale Hurston popularized as “the oldest incorporated African American community in the United States.” She is a founding member and currently the executive director of the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, Inc. (P.E.C.), a historic preservation/cultural arts/community revitalization organization, best known for its sponsorship of the annual Zora Neale Hurston™ Festival of the Arts and Humanities (ZORA!® Festival). Under her leadership, P.E.C. programs have received national recognition, including the ZORA!® Festival’s being named “One of 25 Cultural Tourism Success Stories” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and being the recipient of the “Regional Destination Award in the Humanities” from the Cultural Olympiad (Atlanta, 1996). She has also led the organization’s grants efforts, which cumulatively, have seen P.E.C receive funding totaling several millions dollars. Nathiri holds an undergraduate degree in history from Ithaca College (New York) and a Master of Science degree in library science from Syracuse University. She is the compiler and editor of the award-winning volume, ZORA! Zora Neale Hurston: A Woman and Her Community (Sentinel Communications, 1991). She is also the recipient of several honors including being named “Hero of Preservation” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Mary Call Darby Collins Award presented by the Florida Secretary of State “In recognition of dedication and volunteer action that has forever changed the course of historic preservation in Florida.” In addition, she is the recipient of an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Rollins College. Currently, she serves as Vice President for Cultural Heritage Tourism on the Board of Directors for the Historic Black Towns and Settlements Alliance, Inc. (HBTSA), a multi-state heritage preservation and economic development initiative.

Chaitra Powell since 2014 has served as the African American Collections and Outreach Archivist for the Southern Historical Collection at UNC Libraries. She works to engage African Americans in the archival process by managing a community driven archives program, African American Family Documentation Initiative, and individual consultations with collection donors. Prior to this position, she worked as an archival consultant and archival processor with various community-based organizations in Los Angeles, CA and Chicago, IL. Chaitra’s research in archival methodology has an emphasis on context, as she has written about the relevance of the backgrounds of archivists and the legacies of archival institutions. Chaitra earned her master's degree in Library Science as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of Arizona, in Tucson, AZ.

Dr. Kwesi Daniels is the Head of the Architecture Department at Tuskegee University. His professional experience ranges across various disciplines, including historic preservation, architecture, sustainability management, and urban geography. His historic preservation work includes assisting in the restoration of the Shiloh Rosenwald School in Notasulga, Alabama, one of the oldest remaining Rosenwald Schools in the United States; and documenting African-American historic sites in Philadelphia, PA, and Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham, and Tuskegee, Al. He and his students are currently working to preserve the Armstrong School in Macon County, Al, a Tuskegee rural school model, which is a precursor to the Rosenwald School program. Some of his civic work includes serving as an advisory board member for the UPenn Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Heritage Sites, board member of the Rosenwald Park Campaign Advisory Council, and the 3^rd Congressional District Representative of the Alabama Black Heritage Council. In 2018 he began developing a historic preservation program at Tuskegee University, which has expanded the resources of Tuskegee University into African-American communities in Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham, and Tuskegee, Ala. In 2019 he developed the Legacy of Booker T. Washington course at Tuskegee, a course which examines the social impact, community building, economic development, national and international influence, and overall self-empowerment legacy of Dr. Washington. Booker T. Washington's "Learning to Do by Doing" educational philosophy guides much of Dr. Daniels work. Professor Daniels earned a BA and an MA in Architecture from Tuskegee University and the University of Illinois at Chicago and a MS in sustainability management from Columbia University. In 2020 he earned a Ph.D. in urban geography from Temple University. His doctoral research focused on the positive and negative social impact universities can have on communities around the campuses, particularly communities of color.