Meet the Revolutionary Narratives Team

Mariaelena (Maria) DiBenigno, Ph.D., (she/her) is the Postdoctoral Research Fellow at James Monroe’s Highland, a historic site operated by William & Mary. In this role, she collaborates with campus and community partners on exhibits and co-instructs courses for a diverse group of learners. Maria received her Ph.D. in American Studies from William & Mary, where her dissertation focused on re-interpretation and exhibit design at Virginia’s historic house museums. Before joining the Highland team, Mariaelena worked at W&M Libraries Special Collections Research Center. Her research focuses on how to tell better public histories through inclusive interpretation, new collaborations, and re-examined histories.

Sara Evenson (she/her) is a public historian, adjunct instructor in Museum Studies at Hartwick College, and doctoral candidate at the University at Albany. She spent ten years working in Education at the New York State Historical Association and The Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, NY, before completing a master's in public history at Virginia Tech. She has also consulted with historic sites and museums in central New York for exhibition and public programming needs. Her current research explores kitchens and food labor in eighteenth and early nineteenth century New York, and how modern historic sites utilize kitchens as interpretive spaces.

Anne Lindsay (she/her) is Associate Professor of History at California State University, Sacramento. Her research explores memory and interpretation at historic sites of the long eighteenth century. Her monograph, Reconsidering Interpretation of Heritage Sites: America in the Eighteenth Century was published by Routledge in 2019.

Laura A. Macaluso, Ph.D., (she/her) researches and writes on monuments, museums, murals, and material culture. In 2023, she is working on a historical memory project around Benedict Arnold, a narrative nonfiction manuscript titled Celestial Lives: Yan Phou Lee and the Jeromes of New Haven and a novella (fiction) titled The Ghost of Nathan Hale, An Adoration Story. You can see more of her work at www.lauramacaluso.com or @monumentculture. 

Hilary Miller, Ph.D., (she/her) is Chief of Interpretation with the National Park Service at Adams National Historical Park and an adjunct instructor at Quincy College in Quincy, Massachusetts. She has served as a park ranger with the National Park Service at sites across Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts, and she participated in the National Park Service working group focused on the commemoration of the 19th Amendment centennial. She previously held the position of Director of Education at the Golden Ball Tavern Museum, an American Revolution-era tavern that was the site of the 1774 Weston Tea Party. 

Note: The views expressed by Hilary Miller do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Government and the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Amy Speckart, Ph.D., (she/her) is an independent scholar and Assistant to the Director of Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. After authoring a 2022 Historic Resource Study of Thomas Stone National Historic Site, produced through the OAH-NPS cooperative agreement, Speckart is collaborating with Stone family descendants to create an inclusive national semiquincentennial commemoration near the site in 2026. Speckart has been a researcher, writer, and editor with numerous museums and cultural heritage organizations, including the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the National Trust of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the Vernacular Architecture Forum, and the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. She was the 2004 NHPRC Fellow in Historical Documentary Editing with the Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University. A graduate of UC Berkeley, Speckart holds a M.A. in History from Harvard University and a PhD in American Studies from the College of William and Mary.