Biography

He is a specialist in the built environments of the early modern Atlantic world, with published work on the American South, the Caribbean, and West Africa, and is a leading advocate for the reconstruction of place-based public history. At UVA and in Charlottesville, this work has taken the form of scholarship that contextualizes the four monuments installed at the height of Jim Crow segregation, walking tours and movies that seek to disseminate a broader understanding of how racism is inscribed in the local landscape, a university renaming commission, partnership on a new website for and a narrative interpretation of the new Memorial to Enslaved Laborers, and co-editing both a digital series on UVA and the History of Race and Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s University. He was also the lead author and co-PI on Race, Place, and Equity, a $5 million Andrew Mellon Foundation funded grant.