Professor in the Department of American Studies and the Department of History, and by courtesy in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture.
Previous at Brown: Faculty Director, Brown University Center for Digital Scholarship (2020-2023); Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, 2004-2014 and Interim Director, 2023; Mellon Teaching Fellow, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, 2017-2018; Director of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, 2010-2012. Before coming to Brown, Chair of the Division of the History of Technology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
Guggenheim Fellow, 2016.
Author or co-author of Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present; Legacies: Collecting America's History at the Smithsonian; InfoCulture: the Smithsonian Book of Information Age Inventions; History from Things and Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution, and many articles on museums and on the history of technology.
Exhibits at the Smithsonian include "America on the Move," "Smithsonian's America," and "Engines of Change." Exhibits at Brown include oversight of student exhibitions at the public humanities center, the Haffenreffer Museum, and the John Hay Library.
President, Little Compton Historical Society.
Present interests include museum exhibition practice, the history of museums, material culture studies, public humanities, and the history of technology.
