historian
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Credit: Linda Gale Gellman at Click
After an initial career in Geology, I retrained as an historian, receiving a Ph.D. in History from the University of Southampton in the UK. Since moving to the United States, I have worked in public history in multiple capacities for non-profits as an historian, curator and archivist utilizing print, exhibition and digital formats.
While Historian and Curator of the Benjamin and Dr. Edgar R. Cofeld Judaic Museum, I researched, scripted and curated a reimagined museum experience that opened in 2023. I am currently guiding the museum’s managerial reorganization while consulting on a new education program initiative that produced Legacy of Light: The Journey of Temple Beth Zion and Jewish Buffalo in which I played multiple roles including interviewee.
Separately, as director of a decade long community archives project, I built a unique family and organizational archives at the University at Buffalo. This lead to my role as researcher, author and curator for the Jewish Buffalo History Center, an online resource that includes exhibitions based on original research, currently Sokolivka: Once Home and Harold Arlen. For almost ten years I worked as a field reviewer for the Documentary Heritage and Preservation Services for New York State. I served as a manuscript reviewer for an American Association for State and Local History series published through Rowman & Littlefield and more recently, I organized an archives for Upstate New York’s Better Business Bureau, and authored their illustrated centennial history.
Outside of these activities, I have published articles in Shofar, The Journal of Holocaust Education, and Jewish History and Culture and numerous local publications as well as the pictographic history: Jewish Community of Greater Buffalo. I am currently writing a monograph about postwar Buffalo Jewish life. My interests cross multiple disciplines and practices including museum management, public history, digital history, women’s and gender history, ethnic history, urban history and twentieth century British history. I currently serve as an adjunct professor at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri and previously taught at Daemen and Medaille Universities in Buffalo, NY.