PHI Leadership
Edward E. Baptist, Professor of History
Ernesto Bassi Arevalo, Associate Professor of History
Judith Byfield, Professor of History
Derek Chang, Associate Professor of History and Interim Director, 2023-24
Durba Ghosh, Professor of History
Larry Glickman, Stephen and Evalyn Milman Professor of American Studies
Denise N. Green, Associate Professor of Fiber Science and Apparel Design and Director of the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection
Tamika Nunley, Associate Professor of History
Ben Sandberg, Director of The History Center in Tompkins County
Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik, Assistant Professor or History
Stephen Vider, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Public History Initiative (on leave 2023-24)
Past Affiliates
Kaitlin Findlay, Web Editor
Kaitlin Findlay is a doctoral student in the Cornell History Department. Her current research examines forced displacement, humanitarianism, and memory in the mid-twentieth century. Kaitlin completed her BA History (Honours) at McGill University and her MA Thesis at the University of Victoria, Canada. She has over seven years’ experience in community-engaged and public history, including with the award-winning Landscapes of Injustice project. She has published with McGill-Queen’s University Press and the Canadian Historical Review.
Website: https://history.cornell.edu/kaitlin-findlay
Priyanka Sen, Web and Publicity Designer
Priyanka Sen is a second year Ph.D. student in the History of Architecture and Urban Development program in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University. Her research investigates architectural entanglements with spatial geographies, institutionalized inequalities, human migration and environmental histories. She interrogates several major themes throughout her work, including ecological disasters that promote and perpetuate geological and spatial violence; migration and the immigrant experience in the United States; and the landscapes of memory. She has previously taught design studios at the University of Cincinnati and worked as an architectural designer across the United States, including in Boston, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Portland, Oregon. She holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Cincinnati; a M.A. in Architectural History and Theory from the University of Texas – Austin; and a B.A. in Art History and Architectural Studies with a minor in Women’s Studies from Boston University. She is genuinely thrilled to be bringing her design skills to the Public History Initiative!
Lyrianne González, PHI Graduate Fellow, Fall 2021
Lyrianne González is a fourth-year History Ph.D. student minoring in Latino Studies and served as a PHI graduate fellow in Fall 2021. She graduated from California State University, Northridge in 2019 with a double major in Psychology and Chicana/o Studies. As an HSI Pathways/Mellon Student Fellow, she examined the trajectories of children of Braceros by putting archival material concerning education into conversation with oral histories. At Cornell, her research has expanded to investigating the racial and generational legacies of U.S. agricultural guestworker programs. In 2020, she was selected to take part in the University of Texas at Austin’s Voces Oral History Summer Research Institute, where she learned how to conduct oral histories effectively and ethically and make her research publicly accessible. She has worked with Black Farmers United of New York State by collecting oral histories of Black farmers to bring attention to the disparities they have faced. In the summer of 2021, Lyrianne was awarded the Cornell Summer Graduate Student Fellowship in Digital Humanities. Through this fellowship, she created a publicly accessible digital humanities project that maps guestworker migratory flows: their origin countries and receiving U.S. states, you may visit the project here. Most recently, she was a 2021 Smithsonian Latino Museum Studies Program fellow, where she honed in on her Latinx Studies and Public History interests. As the Fall 2021 Public History Initiative Graduate Fellow, Lyrianne is thrilled to bring the skills she has gained from her past public history experience and guide undergraduates interested in the field.
Website: https://history.cornell.edu/lyrianne-gonzález
Abikal Borah, ACLS Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow, 2021-2022
Abikal Borah is a Public History Initiative Fellow in the Department of History at Cornell University, a position that he holds as an ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow. His research examines entangled histories of race and violence in modern South Africa. He is currently working on a book project titled, Aftertaste of Empire: Amandiya and Racial Violence in South Africa, 1843-1949. It narrates a history of migration, land, and labor in the century leading to the 1949 race riots between the indigenous Zulus and migrant Indians in the port city of Durban. Moving beyond the binary of state violence and popular resistance, it tells a history of racial violence between two historically oppressed communities.
Abikal Borah is now an assistant professor of history at San Diego State University.
Website: https://history.sdsu.edu/people/borah
David Marantes, Web and Program Assistant, 2021-2022
David Marantes is a senior from Boerne, Texas, in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is double majoring in Government and History, and was a 2020-2021 Oral History Undergraduate Fellow. He focuses on international and American comparative politics and history in his studies, and has always loved listening to the stories of people. In the fellowship, David greatly enjoyed working with community members and fellows to document different experiences and looks forward to assisting the program in the future.
David Marantes is now a law student at Duke University.