Cultural documentation & Oral history
Documenting, preserving, and showcasing folklife is not only my passion but also my academic and experiential training. I provide professional documentation of individual, family, group, organization, or community oral histories. Through a series of sessions, we will develop a plan for documenting the experiences, practices, histories, and traditions that are most important to you. I’m able to conduct these projects through direct hire or will collaborate with you to write a grant for the work. Further, I can either develop a project with you from start to finish, or plug in for a specific portion of the work, collaborating with other specialists to make your project a success.
Ethnography: exploration of geographic areas, groups, practices; building relationships and partnerships for your project or organization
Interviewing: storytelling, oral history, focus groups or panel conversations, etc.
Cultural Documentation: photographs of events, performances, demonstrations, etc.
Oral History: interviews focused on historical events from the perspective of everyday citizens and historically excluded groups
Transcribing: word-for-word transcription of interviews using coding that wither aligns with your project/field goals or with Library of Congress standards
Archival accessioning: collaborating with an archival repository to prepare fieldwork materials for archival donation through file naming, tagging and keywording, generating and entering metadata, etc.
Project planning & management
Humanities projects, whether carried about by universities, state-level and national-level granting agencies, or non-profits, require planning and infrastructure in order to succeed and/or persist beyond initial grant funding. I partner with organizations to plan for success, adapt to on-the-ground realities, and sustain community-focused projects.
I co-created the Ohio Field School, an integrated service-learning course, archival collection, and community engagement initiative at Ohio State University, which is currently embarking on its fifth year of life. Through that work, I learned about theories and practices of collaborative, critical ethnography and the everyday logistics that undergird lofty projects.
Aspects of project planning and management that I’m particularly skilled at include:
Community collaborations, especially designing community-responsive and mutually-beneficial projects
Planning for transparency, inclusion & sustainability: building partnerships, communication strategies, accountability structures, emergent design; building programs with a social justice mission; project management platforms
Mission & values mapping
Participatory design and development
Development of internal documents, project guides, training manuals, and user handbooks
Budgeting
Grant writing
Project implementation, reflection, and retooling (emergent design, feedback tools)
Archiving project documentation, such as photographs, communication, interviews, publicity materials, and publications
Publicizing your project to both broad and specific audiences
Reporting to funders and grantors; white papers and scholarly publications
grant writing
Writing a successful grant requires research, planning, and time to write and revise the project proposal. I have successfully funded (especially through collaborative grant writing) community-based projects and can assist with writing your next winning grant proposal!
Services include:
Scoping: finding grants and funders that fit your project
Brainstorming & project planning: creating goals, outcomes, and timelines
Grant writing & editing: aligning grant narratives to grant requirements and language
Budgeting: drafting budgets that reflect your goals, outcomes, and project mission
Research: gathering, compiling, and synthesizing information
Reports: fieldworking reports, final reports, white papers, scholarly articles
Workshops
Drawing on over 15 years of folklore and ethnographic training and experience, I offer workshops that will assist your group or organization achieve its goals, whether that’s applying for your first grant, initiating an oral history project, or developing a local archive.
Workshop topics include (but are not limited to):
Fieldwork and collaborative ethnography: project goals, initial research, interviews, fieldnotes, listening, archiving, maintaining relationships, project refinement and expansion.
Community self-documentation workshops: 1-hour to multi-day workshops that teach communities and organizations how to document their own histories, practices, and cultures, including topics such as forming project questions and goals, technology, crafting interview questions, ethics and permissions, archiving, and sharing your work with various audiences.
Archiving workshops: creating archival databases that enhance consistency, discoverability, and accessibility; archiving for social justice
Grant Writing: scoping, planning to write a grant (including how to find the right grant for your project), conceptualizing your grant proposal, constructing grant proposal timeline, gathering relevant information and lining up partnerships, writing your grant, editing your grant, submitting your grant.
Project management: backwards planning, goal-setting and accountability, iterative processes and emergent design.
advising and evaluation
Publicly-funded humanities projects often require a humanities expert and an assessment by an external evaluator. I am available to serve as your humanities advisor/expert or write an evaluation of your project for projects within my area of expertise. I have also served as a panel judge for state- and national-level granting organizations and can provide recommendations for grant proposals. Below are the capacities in which I can serve your project or organization:
Humanities Professional, Advisor, or Expert
Panel Reviewer
Project Evaluator
Program Evaluator or External Evaluator
lectures
Invited lectures for areas of expertise including
Developing and sustaining university-community collaborative projects
Folklore Studies
Ethnography, Fieldwork, Collaborative Ethnography, Oral History (especially Critical Oral History)
Appalachian Studies (especially Appalachian Ohio)
Commemoration and public display
Home, place, and space
Moral geographies