Photo by Miguel Montalvo
Diana E. Marsh
I am an Assistant Professor of Archives and Digital Curation at the University of Maryland’s College of Information (iSchool). I study how heritage institutions share knowledge with the public and communities. I am also Past Chair of the Native American Archives Section of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and current appointee to the SAA’s new Archival Repatriation Committee. My current research focuses on improving ethical access to institutionally-held archives for communities. I primarily teach in the iSchool’s MLIS program and the university’s graduate Museum Scholarship and Material Culture program. I’m also a founding member of the Center for Archival Futures (CAFe). See my iSchool profile here: https://ischool.umd.edu/about/directory/diana-e-marsh
I am leading projects to test Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC) for addressing “archival diaspora” (Punzalan 2014) and search. I am also working with Katrina Fenlon on an NSF-funded project to more broadly address ethical access to anthropology’s analog archives (dovetailing ongoing work with Ricardo Punzalan to revitalize the Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records, or CoPAR).
From 2017–2020, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives (National Museum of Natural History). At the Smithsonian, I led a three-year NSF-funded project to research the use, access, and discoverability of the NAA's archival collections.
From 2015–2017, I was an Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow at the American Philosophical Society where I researched and curated exhibitions drawing primarily on archival collections (Curious Revolutionaries: The Peales of Philadelphia, April–December 2017, and Gathering Voices: Thomas Jefferson and Native America, April–December 2016). In 2014–2015, I was a Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow in Museum Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where I taught courses in museology. I completed my PhD in Anthropology at UBC in 2014. For my dissertation project, I conducted an ethnography of exhibition planning at the National Museum of Natural History. Prior to that, I completed my MPhil in Social Anthropology with a Museums and Heritage focus at the University of Cambridge in 2010, and a BFA in Visual Arts and Photography at the Mason Gross School of the Arts of Rutgers University in 2009.
My work has appeared in The American Archivist, Archival Science, Archivaria, Archival Outlook, and Museum Anthropology. My book, Extinct Monsters to Deep Time: Conflict, Compromise, and the Making of Smithsonian’s Fossil Halls, was published in 2019, and in paperback in 2022, with Berghahn Books.
Email me at dmarsh(at)umd.edu
Education
2014 Ph.D. Anthropology, (Museum Anthropology), University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, BC.
2010 M.Phil. Social Anthropological Analysis (Museums & Heritage focus), Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK.
2009 B.F.A. Visual Arts, Photography concentration; Cultural Anthropology double major, Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts, New Brunswick NJ, 3.95 GPA, summa cum laude, Dean’s List all semesters.
Professional Appointments
2020–
Assistant Professor of Archives and Digital Curation, College of Information Studies (iSchool), University of Maryland.
2017–2020
Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropological Archives, National Anthropological Archives, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.
2015–2017
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow, American Philosophical Society.
2014–2015
Postdoctoral Research & Teaching Fellow, Museum Anthropology, UBC Department of Anthropology.
2014–2017
Research Associate, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH), Smithsonian Institution, Oct 2014–Oct 2017.