Research

Interests:

historical ecology | landscape history | historical archaeology | bioarchaeology | forensic and cultural anthropology | ethnobotany | material culture | heritage conservation | indigenous studies | museum studies | exploration history | maritime history / archaeology | 18th- and 19th-century culture | natural history studies | scientific illustration | biodiversity studies | taxonomy / phylogeny | phenology and historical climatology

 

Experience:

February 2018

  • United States National Herbarium (Smithsonian)
    Endeavour Voyage botanical specimens 1768-1771
  • Oak Spring Garden Library
    Eighteenth-century botanical illustrators in the circle of Sydney Parkinson

May-July 2006

Research related to Sydney Parkinson in London, England and Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland, funded by the Gravely-Hampson Global Studies Fund (Randolph College):

  • Natural History Museum (London)
    Endeavour Botanical & Zoological Illustrations; Sydney Parkinson’s Zoological Illustrations from Joseph Banks’s Newfoundland Collections; Sydney Parkinson Illustrations copied from the collections of Joan Gideon Loten; Sydney Parkinson’s Self-Portrait
  • British Museum
    Sydney Parkinson paintings from the collection of Sir Joseph Banks; Endeavour ethnographic collections (Enlightenment Rooms)
  • British Library
    Sydney Parkinson’s Endeavour voyage sketchbooks and ethnographic/ landscape illustrations; drawings by Tupaia 1769-1770
  • School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London
    Endeavour voyage Pacific vocabularies: Parkinson, Banks, Solander
  • Westminster Archives
    Rate Books for St. Ann’s and St. James’s Parish, 1750-1776
  • Friends House Library
    Correspondence of Sydney Parkinson, John Fothergill; Genealogies of Parkinson, Middleton families
  • Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow
    Natural History Specimens of William Hunter, Duchess of Portland; Maori artifacts
  • Edinburgh
    City archives; Quaker Meetinghouse and cemetery; St. Cuthbert’s baptisms

 

Mentorship / Supervised Research:

2012-Present

The following projects are part of an ongoing research initiative in the Randolph College Natural History & Archaeology Collections Project, which I founded with Doug Shedd in 2011. I oversee student research pertaining to collections management, object conservation, scientific illustration, and active fieldwork. Some past research projects include:

  • “Digitizing Natural History Collections” by Sara Graul and Eli Shadrach (2013)
  • “Bioarchaeology of Bir-el-Knissia in Tunisia” by Igor Bayder, Olivia Reed, Max Niketic, and Will Guzman (2014)
  • “Dental Attrition of 6th-century Remains from Bir-el-Knissia, Tunisia” by Franziska Klostermyer and Cal Frye (2015)
  • “Curation and Digitization of the Walter A. Weber Bird Collection” by Seth Dorman and Kelia Cutkelvin (2015)
  • “Calculating MNI (Minimum Number of Individuals) from Fragmented Remains: Bioarchaeology and DNA Analysis of Bir-el-Knissia” by Rachel Hickman, Jessica Sidebottom, Maureen Edu, and Josie Hatley (2016)
  • “Natural History Illustration” by Lydia Genard (2016)
  • “Preparing Bird and Mammal Specimens for Use in the RC Natural History Collections” by Lytease Industrious and Michael Pulliam (2016)
  • “Bringing the RC Herbarium into the 21 st Century” by Ryan McDonald and Kelsey Fastabend (2017)
  • “3D Scanning and Forensic Facial Reconstruction of 19 th Century Human Skulls in the
    Randolph College Biology Collection” by Nhut Dang and Kayla Henniger (2017)
  • “Illustrating Speciation and Sexual Selection in North American Birds” by Zoë Upshaw (2017)
  • “Restoring Native Pollinators to Randolph College Campus” by Kelsey Fastabend (2018; this research project won the award for best poster at the 2018 Symposium of Artists & Scholars)
  • “Botanical Illustrators at Oak Spring Garden Library” by Zoë Upshaw (2018)