partners

Depending on your needs, Lived Heritage Studies LLC can reach out to our partners for important legal, social science, community participation, diversity/inclusion, and related cultural heritage expertise. The people and organizations listed here are all potentially available to participate in your project.

Ashley Adams, Ph.D.

Dr. Ashley Adams serves as Assistant Adjunct Professor of Public Policy and Interim Department Chair of Public Policy and Political Science at Mills College at Northeastern University. She also serves as Lecturer and has taught in the Public Policy and International Affairs Program (PPIA) at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Dr. Adams is a descendant of early settlers of the historic Black town and federally designated site, Nicodemus, Kansas. Since her 2016 dissertation research, Examining the Cultural and Historical Impact of the National Historic Site Designation in Nicodemus, Kansas, Dr. Adams has primarily dedicated her research platform to improving Black history preservation practices within national and state preservation systems. Publications from this work can be found in the Journal of Management History and Great Plains Research, amongst others.

 Dr. Adams is also currently working on her first book, which will detail preservation reparations criteria for the purposes of technical guidance in African American historic preservation reparations planning. She also serves as Nicodemus, KS Site Coordinator for the Voices & Votes: Democracy in America 2023 Smithsonian Exhibit, in partnership with Kansas Humanities, the Nicodemus Historical Society, and National Park Service. Additionally, she was featured in the Cal Ag Roots-California Humanities-National Endowment for the Humanities podcast, We Are Not Strangers Here Ep 5: Back to the Land: Allensworth and the Black Utopian Dream and most recently as a guest on the Janus Adams Show. 

Aside from preservation policy work, Dr. Adams has also helped to organize anti-racism initiatives at Mills College in her role as a founding Co-Chair for the Black Faculty and Staff Association and Member of the Black Action Forum.  Additionally, she has engaged additional research projects related to BIPoC inclusive mental health services, uplifting underrepresented Oakland-based business owners, and participatory action research for quality pre-term birth initiatives, amongst other topics and adding to over 20+ years of combined academic, professional, and teaching experience related to  racial equity, social empathy, public affairs, social policy analysis, and nonprofit and community services management. 

Jeffrey A. “Free” Harris

Jeffrey A. “Free” Harris is a Hampton, Virginia based historian & preservation consultant who works with historic preservation organizations, historic sites, and non-profit organizations on issues related to diversity in the preservation movement and historic site interpretations.  He is a national public speaker on issues related to African American, LGBTQ and diversity broadly in the historic preservation movement.

Currently, Free is working as a consulting historian on an architectural survey of Thomas W. Boyde, Jr, the first registered African American architect in Rochester, NY; he also is working as a consulting historian on a multiple property document focused on Virginia’s African American waterman communities around the Chesapeake Bay. Free is also working on an historic context study of the LGBTQ communities of Raleigh, NC. Free was the first Director for Diversity at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  Free currently is Vice Chair of the Virginia Board of Historic Resources, and Board Chair of the Rainbow Heritage Network, a national organization that advocates for the preservation of LGBTQIA+ historic places.

He contributed the chapter “’Where We Could Be Ourselves’:  African American LGBTQ Historic Places and Why They Matter” to the National Park Service’s 2016 LGBTQ Heritage Theme Study. Past clients have included the Heritage Ohio, the Nevada Preservation Foundation, Hanbury Preservation Consulting, the Young Preservationists Association of Pittsburgh, and Cliveden (a National Trust Historic Site).

Richard M. Hutchings, Ph.D.

Richard M. Hutchings is a founding co-director (with Marina La Salle) of the Institute for Critical Heritage and Tourism, British Columbia, Canada. Applying critical heritage theory to the fields of Archaeology, Material Culture Studies, Heritage Studies, and Cultural Resource Management, Hutchings’ work shows how the heritage industry contributes to contemporary problems like climate change and development-driven landscape destruction. Richard has expertise in both cultural heritage and natural heritage problems, as exemplified in his book Maritime Heritage in Crisis: Indigenous Landscapes and Global Ecological Breakdown (Routledge, 2015) and his book chapter Disciplinary Complicity: The University, Material Culture Studies, and Global Environmental Crisis (CUP, 2022). His published work can be accessed here.

Angela Labrador, Ph.D.

Angela is Assistant Program Director / Sr. Lecturer in the Cultural Heritage Management and Museum Studies programs of Johns Hopkins University. As an anthropologist and educator with a background in archaeology and IT, her research focuses on the policies, ethics, and social relations that promote the safeguarding of living heritage and working landscapes. She uses participatory action research methods to engage with heritage at local levels and has helped develop digital heritage inventory systems used by governments and NGOs around the world.

As co-founding partner (with Neil Silberman and Gustavo Araoz) of Coherit Associates, she has worked on capacity building projects in the US and Caribbean. She has contributed to new model policies, inventory frameworks, sustainability standards, and professional development opportunities that promote emic approaches to heritage ethics and holistic understandings of accessibility. Such approaches can also be found in her co-edited volume, The Oxford Handbook of Public Heritage Method and Theory (2018).

Angela has worked as a consultant to UNESCO, helping to develop their online Clearinghouse on Living Heritage and Education and has recently published a literature review on “Integrating ICH and Education” in the International Journal of Intangible Heritage. She has applied her research to developing teacher training opportunities, recently co-directing an NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture grant to train K-12 teachers in place-based education using local heritage sites. She serves as co-chair of the Society for American Archaeology’s Public Education Committee and is an expert member of the ICOMOS International Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Marina La Salle, Ph.D.

Marina La Salle is a founding co-director (with Richard Hutchings) of the Institute for Critical Heritage and Tourism, Canada. An expert in several heritage fields, including Indigenous heritage and the law, colonization and decolonization, Indigenous peoples and parks, Pacific Northwest Coast archaeology, and heritage grant writing, La Salle has published extensively on topics of local, national, and international interest. Her previous positions include Director of Culture and History, Sealaska Heritage Institute, Juneau, Alaska, and Professor of Anthropology, Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, British Columbia. Marina is currently Senior Researcher with White Raven Law Corporation, where she has worked for the past decade. Her most recent project concerns Indigenous Legal Orders and Climate Law. Her published work can be accessed here.

Khamal Patterson, J.D., Esq.

Khamal is a cultural property attorney and researcher in Maryland and D.C. He is keenly interested in preserving the continuity of traditional knowledge and applying it to modern challenges. The preservation and protection of cultural space and objects are crucial for continuity of heritage practices.

Khamal works with ARTIVE, a cultural heritage database for artworks and artifacts. ARTIVE and its partner, the Arc/k Project, recently placed in a global competition on transformational information technology in cultural heritage. Both organizations will be engaged in the digital preservation of vernacular architecture in Syria. Khamal is a lead on this project that will train local Syrian citizens to capture historic structures, architectural features, and artifacts.

In the fall of 2022, Khamal will examine the myriad dimensions of historic preservation and cultural heritage protection as a lecturer at the University of Maryland, College Park. Khamal will take this journey with graduate students, faculty, and colleagues. In the course, they will address how historic preservation can engage and transform our relationship with space and place by informing our perspectives.  

Khamal has also recently signed on to contribute to the 1526 Project. The Project explores the hidden or forgotten stories of the toiling and thriving of enslaved and unfree peoples in the Americas. Their mettle helped forge the history, institutions, and cultures of its various Republics.  

Khamal enjoys listening to the diverse voices and is excited about working with people seeking to preserve the tiles of our American Mosaic. It is a privilege for him to be affiliated with Lived Heritage Studies LLC because of its dedication to impactful inclusion in historic preservation projects and the discipline. Khamal is available to assist clients with research, analysis, and more. He looks forward to meeting you.

Neil Silberman

Neil is an author and interpretation specialist who has formulated interpretive plans for museums and heritage sites in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. One of his main interests is in the development of interpretive techniques and technologies that increase the creative and meaningful participation of underserved communities and individuals.

He served for a decade as the founding president of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Interpretation and Presentation (ICIP). In that position he served as chief editor of the 2008 ICOMOS Charter for the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites. From 2004 to 2007, he served as director of the Ename Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation in Belgium. He is the recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Institute of Current World Affairs. In 2015, he was named a lifetime Fellow of US/ICOMOS.

In 2008, he joined the faculty of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and became one of the founders of its Center for Heritage and Society. He also served as co-editor of its journal Heritage & Society (2008-2014) and is currently a lecturer in the Advanced Academic Program in Museum and Heritage Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Cultural Property and the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies.

From 2013 to 2020, his consulting firm, Coherit Associates, implemented a 14-nation Caribbean heritage development project for the Organization of American States (OAS). In 2022, he was appointed to the advisory committee of the International Centre for the Interpretation and Presentation of World Heritage in South Korea, the first UNESCO Category 2 Centre dedicated to the communication of information about World Heritage Sites and the significance of heritage protection and promotion for global society.

His books and edited volumes on heritage, archaeology, and their impact on contemporary understandings of the past:  The Oxford Handbook of Public Heritage Method and Theory (2018), The Oxford Companion to Archaeology (2012); The Future of Heritage (2008); Who Owns the Past? (2007); Memory and Identity (2007); David and Solomon (2006); The Bible Unearthed (2001); Heavenly Powers (1998); The Message and the Kingdom (1997); Invisible America (1995); The Hidden Scrolls (1994); A Prophet from Amongst You (1993); Between Past and Present (1989); and Digging for God & Country (1982).