Recent Projects & Initiatives
Transnational Suburbanism
Since 2022, I’ve been part of a group of transnational scholars studying suburbs and urban peripheries in the US and EU — with scholars from the Czech Republic, France, German, and U.S. We are working on an edited volume out of this collaboration, with the working title Suburbia Reconsidered: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on a Global Trend. We held our capstone conference at Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic, in May 2024.
LA County Demographic Data Project, 1950-2010
With support from the NEH, I worked with a team from the USC Digital Library to make publicly available a large dataset on L.A. County municipalities from 1950-2010.
Public history and reparative justice projects
Over the past dozen years, I’ve consulted on a number of public history projects, from SurveyLA for the City of Los Angeles, to several reparative justice projects. They include histories of discrimination in housing and land use in the Los Angeles area, the history of displacement of communities of color by freeway projects, and the indigenous roots of the land under and around All Saints Church, Pasadena.
The Suburb Toolkit
Many suburbs are reckoning with their past histories of exclusion and injustice. This toolkit helps communities promote an inclusive, welcoming environment for all residents. I am working with a group of advisors to help develop and disseminate this Toolkit.
Research access - equity for all
Over the past few years, I've been advocating to create a more even playing field for historians who do research and scholarship outside of academia. For all scholars, access to a decent university library can make or break their prospects as scholars. It is our intellectual lifeblood.
1915 map by the Automobile Club. http://www.bigmapblog.com/maps/map01/LGLZtfpmGVJGunrq.jpg
Since 2011, I've been serving as co-coordinator of the LA History & Metro Studies Group, a group I've been involved with since its inception in 1991. This group is an important hub of the community of scholars and historians working on Los Angeles history and urban/metro history more broadly. Our roster and past programs read like a who's who of LA history scholarship.
You can find out more about our group here, and follow us on Facebook.
LA History & Metro Studies Group
In 2019, Mayor Eric Garcetti convened a working groups of historians, indigenous elders and scholars, architects, artists, curators, designers, and other civic and cultural leaders to collectively brainstorm on the idea of civic memory in Los Angeles. I was part of that group, and co-chaired the subcommittee on “Sites and Themes.” To read our committee’s report, click here. The working group’s final report, Past Due, summarizes our efforts.