Meet the blog team

MEET THE 

BLOG TEAM

Kelly M. Britt (left) received her B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts/Boston and continued her studies at Columbia University where she received her M.A. and M.Phil., also in Anthropology.  She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at Columbia University, completing her research on the effects of archaeology and heritage tourism on community economics and identity at the Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith Historic Site in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Her research interests include historical archaeology, urban studies, historic preservation, heritage studies, museum studies, tourism, and advocacy issues, especially around the topics of memory, construction of identity, and linking the past to the present in public interpretations of the past.

Antony Cherian (center) is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where he previously completed a Master of Science in Information Systems.  He has worked on public history and digital media projects for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, Diverse Arts' Austin Blues Family Tree, the Lummi Nation's Northwest Indian College, and elsewhere.  "Truth I Ever Told," an oral history documentary that he co-authored and produced, won the American Folklore Society's 2003 Zora Neale Hurston Prize in African American Studies for its depiction of an African American farming community in rural Washington County, Texas.  Tony is currently working on his dissertation on the construction of narrative at Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site.

Denise Meringolo (right) is professor and coordinator of the Public History Track at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  She completed her Ph.D. at George Washington University and conducts research in American cultural history, with a particular interest in museums and other public historical institutions.  She has worked in numerous public history organizations, including the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, and the Accokeek Foundation at Piscataway Park.  Her scholarly work theorizes the relationship between public history and identity formation/  she is currently writing a book about the origins of the National Park Service's history program in the 1930s.