I am a public historian and a digital humanist.  As a public historian, I work with colleagues, students, and the community to “curate the city,” thinking about the vernacular landscape as if it were a museum collection, in need of conservation and interpretation.

At Arizona State University, I am a public historian. I have worked with my students and the Papago Salado Association, Salt River Stories, a mobile project through which we’re curating the region’s history.

Prior to joining ASU, I was founding director of the Center for Public History and Digital Humanities.  In conjunction with undergraduates and regional teachers, and colleagues, I developed a website devoted to the history Cleveland Cultural Gardens. We at the Center built the to the Euclid Corridor Transportation Project in collaboration with Cleveland Public Art, ideastream and the Greater Cleveland Regional Transportation Authority. The project interprets the region’s history in multimedia stories that appear on nineteen interactive, multimedia kiosks located along Euclid Avenue in 2009. We have crafted a parallel oral history project. To date, we have collected over 450 oral histories.

The Center for Public History and Digital Humanities has nearly a dozen ongoing projects, and dozens of project partners, ranging from the Shaker Lakes Nature Center to the Center for History & New Media. Check the links on this page or go directly there.

In Cleveland, I also trained K-12 social studies (especially history teachers), and coordinated the department’s social studies program. I also directed several Teaching American History Projects, including Rivers, Roads, & Rails and the Sounds of American History, and Constructing, Consuming, and Conserving America, in collaboration with the Educational Service Center of Cuyahoga County.