Researchers

Emma Johansen (they/them/theirs;  she/her/hers)

Emma Johansen is a recent graduate of the University of Louisville. They graduated summa cum laude with a major in History and a minor in LGBT Studies. Their senior honors thesis, “Land Lines: Modes of Communication in Kentucky’s Queer Past and Present,” won the Best College Honors Thesis Project in the Social Science Division, as well as the Anne Braden Institute Social Justice Research Paper Award.

Emma was the President of the Phi Alpha Theta-Nu Xi Chapter for two years and was awarded the 2021 Mary K. Tachau award for best graduating history student. Their main areas of interest include transgender history, the history of gay press and journalism, and social justice movements in the American South.

They currently work as Collections Assistant at The Filson Historical Society, where they digitize, catalogue, and exhibit incoming manuscript collections. They plan to attend graduate school for archival studies and pursue a doctorate in queer history.

Dr. Lara Kelland (she/her/hers)

Lara Kelland is the E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professor in Museum Studies and Community History in the department of History. She earned her PhD in 2013 from the University of Illinois at Chicago in U.S. History.

Her book, Clio’s Foot Soldiers: Twentieth-Century US Social Movements and the Uses of Collective Memory (University of Massachusetts Press, 2018) traces the use of history in 20th century social movements, including Civil Rights, Black Power, Women’s Liberation, Gay Liberation, and American Indian Movements. In it, she argues that grassroots activists helped shape the field of public history and helped to cultivate the democratic practices embraced by many cultural organizations. Her second book project engages collective memory and the cultural power of heritage in Puerto Rico.

Prior to coming to UMSL, Dr. Kelland was an Assistant Professor of US and Public History and Comparative Humanities at the University of Louisville, where she also directed the Public History graduate concentration and certificate. In Louisville and in Chicago during graduate school, she worked on public history projects in various community-based and cultural organizations.