About
I am a historian of twentieth-century science and technology with a particular focus on the postwar US and its transatlantic connections. My research and teaching are located at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies (STS), the history of labor and work, and Museum studies.
Research: In my dissertation, I look at how, between 1925 and 1965, American social scientists turned the factory into a laboratory to study how managerial and professional experts in industry and society could use psychological, anthropological, and sociological knowledge to manage undesirable individual and collective responses to technological change. Like the members of the Yale Technology Project (1946-62), social scientists treated the factory as a model for American society at large. They argued that lessons that could be learned from studying human behavior on the shopfloor could be applied to other settings as well. With regard to managing the social and psychological impact of technological change, social scientists redefined themselves and other managerial and professional experts as "architects of adjustment." Like administrators, engineers, or personnel managers in industry, social scientists believed they had the responsibility of helping working people and those who supervised them adjust to new technologies. By portraying the relationship between human beings and technology as one of adjustment, factory-based social scientists reinforced popular views of technology as "progressive" and "sublime" and of humans and society as "reactive" and "malleable."
Using a "labor history of science" approach, I show that the production of social science knowledge in the factory was a collaborative and cooperative process that relied on different kinds of labor, resources, and infrastructures. Social scientists needed to employ an array of tools and techniques to enroll a set of diverse actors in their research projects. These included academic field workers, industrial workers and their family members, supervisory and managerial staff, union representatives and corporate heads, as well as university administrators and philantrophic donors.
Since the W2024 semester, I have been working as a Research Associate for the the University of Michigan's Inclusive History Project (IHP). At the IHP I support the collaborative research efforts of the 1817 Project: Land, Culture, Memory, and Repair which is led by Professor Jay Cook. See our latest visual report, The 1817 Project: Visualizing the History of the University of Michigan’s Early Land Possessions.
During the FA2024 semester, I completed a Rackham Doctoral Intern Fellowship with IHP. I supported the IHP's public engagement efforts on all three U-M campuses. Among other things, I assisted IHP Manager of Engagement, Jennifer Junkermeier-Khan, with setting up the exhibt, In Search of Memories, at U-M Flint's UCEN Gallery and helped to prepare, conduct, and evaluate nine IHP class visits.
During the 2022/23 academic year, I was a Graduate Student Research Fellow at U-M's Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies.
My research has been supported by:
Public Scholarship:
During the SU and FA2023 semesters, I served as the Museum Studies Intern at the Detroit Historical Society (DHS). During this time I collaborated with DHS, the Woodbridge Neighborhood Development Corporation (WND), and residents of the Detroit neighborhood, Woodbridge, on a plan to implement a self-guided, virtually-enhanced, and oral history-based historical walking tour of Woodbridge. I was awarded a Rackham Public Scholarship Grant to create the Woodbridge Oral History Archive with DHS, WND, and Woodbridge residents from May 2024 to August 2025.
My public scholarship has been supported by:
Teaching:
Previously, I worked for five History and STS-focused courses as a GSI at U-M:
- History 231 - Inside the Mind of Terror, Dr. Michael Hickok (W2025)
- Hist285/RC SCCI275 – Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society, Prof. John Carson (online and in-person; W2021 and W2022)
- Hist346/AmCult348 – History of American Radicalism, Prof. Howard Brick (in-person; FA2021)
- His101 – What is History?, Prof. Farina Mir & Paulina Alberto (online; FA2020)
In addition to working with my students in the classroom, I am also currently working as a Graduate Student Instructor Consultant for U-M's Center for Research on Learning and Teaching.
My dedication to teaching and student mentorship has been recognized by the History Department by awarding me the John Williams Prize for Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor in U.S. History (FA2022), and U-M's Rackham Graduate School which awarded me an Outstanding Graduate Instructor Award (W2023). I am a proud alumnus of the U-M Graduate Teacher Certificate Program and the Rackham Professional Development DEI Certificate Program.
Service: During the FA2024 semester, I served as Dissertation Writing Group Leader for U-M's Sweetland Center for Writing.
During the 2023/24 academic year, I have been serving as the History Graduate Program Curriculum Data Intern for the History Department's Graduate Curriculum Working Group. In this role, I helped the Working Group make suggestions for reforming the History Department's Graduate Program curriculum.
During the 2022/23 and 2023/24 academic years, I was one of the Coordinating Chairs of the STS Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop series. In 2022/23, I also served as a peer-mentor in the History Department's DEI program and as Student Representative on the STeMS Speaker Series Committee.
From FA2020 to FA2024, I served as Coordinating Chair for the International Graduate Instructor (IGSI) Caucus of the Graduate Employees' Organization (GEO3550).
In my freetime, I love to run and cycle around Detroit and hit the pitch for Woodbridge FC.
Background: Before coming to U-M, I worked as an Adjunct Assistant Lecturer at the Institute for American Studies at Leipzig University, Germany from 2017 to 2019, and as a Guide for the Germany Close Up program. I received both my B.A. (2012) and M.A. (2016) in American studies from Leipzig University and spent two semesters at Ohio University in 2011 as a BA Plus Fellow.
In 2013/14, I spent a year at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, MI as a Service for Peace Fellow through the Service for Peace program of Action Reconciliation Service for Peace.
During my time in Detroit, the processes and issues that have shaped the Metropolitan Detroit region over the course of the 20th and 21st century started to interest me. One result of these growing interests was Growing Together Detroit, an alternative summer break program I helped setting up with activists from Action Reconciliation Service for Peace, Repair the World (Detroit), and the Eden Gardens Block Club.
Academically, Metropolitan Detroit became my spatial focal point, too. Bringing together intellectual history with urban studies, political economy, and cultural history, I wrote my MA thesis about Detroit philosopher and activist Grace Lee Boggs.
My teaching at Leipzig University revolved around the process of deindustrialization and its social and economic consequences in the Detroit-Windsor region and the North Atlantic, and the history of the 1967 Detroit Riot.
