Ana Edwards is conducting interviews for the East Marshall Street Well Oral History Project. Edwards is a public historian with research interests in the history and significance of “Gabriel's Rebellion,” 18th century Black life in Virginia, how both informed the construction of the American nation, how these histories are articulated in public landscapes and why they resonate today. As founding chair of the Defenders’ Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project (2004), and in collaboration with other community organizations, she contributed to the reclamation of Richmond's first municipal African Burial Ground and leads the in-progress community campaign to establish a Memorial Park in Shockoe Bottom, the 19th century epicenter of the US domestic slave trade and birth district of the city of Richmond--a project now part of the city’s strategic development plan. Her advocacy work includes education, social justice and historic preservation advocacy for African American spaces, especially pre and post emancipation burial places--among them VCU East Marshall Street Well Project, Shockoe Bottom and Shockoe Hill African, East End and Evergreen cemeteries. In 2019, the Sacred Ground Project convened 22 scholars to present at "Truth and Conciliation in the 400th Year: a Shockoe Bottom Public History Symposium" at the Library of Virginia. Edwards was the recipient of the inaugural VCU History Department Alumni Achievement Award in 2021 for her contributions to public history and advocacy for social justice and the 2022 Engage for Change Community Educator Award from the University of Richmond's Bonner Center for Civic Engagement. 

Michael Lawrence Dickinson, PhD is co-director of the HRC Health Humanities Lab East Marshall Street Oral History Project, and an associate professor of African American history at Virginia Commonwealth University. He was a 2019-2020 Barra Sabbatical Fellow at University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies. His research interests include enslaved black life, comparative slavery, Black Atlantic studies, and urban history. Dr. Dickinson’s book Almost Dead: Slavery and Social Rebirth in the Black Urban Atlantic was recently published by the University of Georgia Press as part of its Race and the Atlantic World Series.

Past Fellows

Maggie Unverzagt Goddard, PhD is the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow for the East Marshall Street Well Project, and Associate Director of the HRC Health Humanities Lab. Her interdisciplinary research on the politics of aesthetics and memory work engages visual culture studies, public humanities, and critical theories of the body. With a background in public engagement and curation, her writing has been published in the Journal of Popular Culture, Women and Performance, Fwd: Museums, and the edited collection Fallen Monuments and Contested Memorials. She holds a PhD in American Studies and an MA in Public Humanities from Brown University.

Daniel Sunshine, PhD is the Postdoctoral Fellow in History for the East Marshall Street Well Project, and Associate Director of the HRC Health Humanities Lab. His research considers the evolution of American democracy in the 19th century, as well as the experiences of enslaved people under the law. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post and the Journal of the Greenbrier Historical Society. He is an award-winning teacher, and a public historian who has worked with the National Park Service and Encyclopedia Virginia. He holds a PhD and an MA in History from the University of Virginia.