About Me

I received my PhD in History from the University of California, San Diego and MA in English from the University of Delaware. I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Black Digital Research at Pennsylvania State University and will be an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Irvine. My project, “A Freedom No Greater Than Bondage: Black Refugees and Unfree Labor at the Dawn of Mass Incarceration,” traces the lives of Black refugees and formerly enslaved people who experienced incarceration in the hands of the Union military (and thereby the federal government) during the Civil War and Reconstruction era. I am also a long-time member of the Colored Conventions Project (CCP), having created several digital exhibits that explore Black activism and politics. My publications on the Colored Conventions movement center Black women’s activism in the long nineteenth century.