Fernanda Espinosa (2015)

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Fernanda Espinosa is an oral history-based practitioner and cultural organizer based in New York/New Jersey and Ecuador. She approaches storytelling as one of the many ways of transmitting knowledge and her analysis and practice are deeply embedded in interrogating colonial standards, including story forms. Since 2014 she has been generating, listening to, and interpreting oral histories with a focus on Latinx and Latin American voices in English and Spanish and cultivating public interventions that aspire to act as platforms for resistance and dialogue. Espinosa holds a degree in Oral History from Columbia University where her thesis was awarded the 2018 Jeffrey H. Brodsky Oral History Award. Most recently, she led community partnerships with StoryCorps from 2018 to 2020, and was awarded the 2020 MDOC Storyteller's Institute Fellowship. Fernanda is also the co-founder and coordinator of Cooperativa Cultural 19 de enero (CC 1/19), a wandering art and oral transmissions collaboration.

Eylem Delikanli (2015)

Eylem Delikanlı is an independent researcher and a writer for the daily BİRGün. Her articles focus on American politics and culture. She holds an MA in Sociology specializing in the sociology of communication. She is the co-author of the book Keşke Bir Öpüp Koklasaydım (with Ozlem Delikanli in Turkish, Istanbul: Ayrıntı Yayınları September 2013), a work of oral history about the 1980 Coup D’État in Turkey. Her current research as a sequel focuses on the political refugees living in Europe and North America after the Coup. She is the co-editor and contributing writer for an upcoming book on authoritarianism in Turkey.

Eylem is a founding co-op member of Research Institute on Turkey - a grassroots research cooperative based in NY focusing on communization practices for social change in Turkey with an emphasis on social and economic justice, gender equality, sexual rights, cultural and political recognition, and ecologic sustainability from a critical historical perspective. Her recent archival work as part of the RIT Collective Memory includes the press archive of Devrimci Yol, one of Turkey’s largest political movements in the 70s. Eylem is also a member of Çocuklarız Bir Aradayız initiative – a group working towards building a collective memory of 1980 Coup D’État in Turkey.

Geraldo Jay Scala (2015)

Geraldo Jay Scala is currently a freelance musician, writer, and aspiring oral historian. He has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Philosophy from Columbia University. Geraldo recently finished a master’s degree at New York University’s Draper Program in Humanities and Social Thought in August 2015.

Geraldo’s recent master’s thesis is entitled, “Socially Inclusive Approaches to Addiction: The Stories of Sanitation Workers in Recovery.” In coordination with Dr. Robin Nagle (Director of the Department of Humanities and Social Thought and Resident Anthropologist for the New York City Department of Sanitation), Geraldo’s oral history project juxtaposes the stories of two sanitation workers who have struggled with substance abuse issues with the story of a heroin addict unaffiliated with the Department of Sanitation. Geraldo contends that the aforementioned personal stories reveal how trauma, social ties, usefulness, purpose, and personal responsibility all contribute to the ways individuals experience addiction and recovery. Addicts are only addicts in relation to a whole system of symbolic rules and obligations.

Geraldo’s research interests include continental philosophy, political economy, phenomenology, existentialism, ethnography, urban anthropology, oral history, social exclusion, and substance abuse. His geographic focus is on the continental United States, particularly inner cities and suburbia.

Christina Pae (2015)

Christina Pae joins OHMA after almost twenty years as a corporate lawyer, intermingled with several forays in the food industry. In her prior lives, she worked at some of the largest financial institutions in the world, a Michelin 3-star restaurant, and a cheese cave in Long Island City.

 

Christina received her A.B. in Russian Studies from Brown University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. She is particularly interested in stories about Koreans of her parents’ generation, who emigrated after the Korean War.

 

Bud Kliment (2015)

A native of Philadelphia and a graduate of Columbia College, Bud Kliment is a Deputy Administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, helping to organize and oversee the annual awards in journalism, books, drama, and music. He has also worked regularly as a freelance writer, specializing in music and the other performing arts.

Bud has published young adult biographies of Count Basie, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald, along with travel guides, cookbooks, and museum labels. He wrote a radio series for BBC World Service that used Motown songs to help teach English. In a younger incarnation, he ran a record store.

Bud is very pleased to be joining the OHMA program and returning to a Columbia classroom. He hopes to learn how to use oral history techniques to record and preserve cultural and artistic activities that are essentially ephemeral and collaborative, and also how to manage oral history projects.

Sara Jacobs (2015)

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Sara Jacobs is originally from Springfield, Illinois and currently lives in Chicago. She graduated from American University’s Honor’s College in Washington, D.C. with a B.A. in Spanish/Latin American Studies in 2012.  Her OHMA thesis focuses on a group of activists in her hometown who are working to address racial and economic disparities in the city. Their life histories cover topics like incarceration, displacement, and community organizing. To hear clips as well as full oral histories, visit  http://www.urbanactionnetwork.org/ 

Reem Aboukhater (2012)

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Reem Aboukhater just moved to New York City from Boston - her favorite city in the world! She attended Boston College where she pursued her love for literature. When Reem is not conducting OHMA interviews she’s working at Stick Figure Productions helping to make documentary films. Reem originally comes from the Middle East; she grew up in England and France, and now she describes herself as a citizen of the world.

Maggie Argiro (2013)

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Maggie Argiro, originally from Columbus, Ohio, joins OHMA from Ohio Wesleyan University where she received a BA in Sociology/Anthropology. She has in interest in writing and wishes to find ways to bridge the humanities and the social sciences with oral history. In 2012 Maggie received a “Theory-to-Practice” grant through Ohio Wesleyan University to travel to Cuba and learn about the history and people of Santería. While there she conducted interviews and returned with a photographic exhibition that incorporated the collected oral histories.  She has also interned with the Somali Documentary Project, a non-profit organization formerly located in Columbus, Ohio. She assisted with grantwriting and research, and became involved with the Somali community. She intends on returning to collect life histories from Somalis who live in Columbus. Her research interests include the movements of people, transnationalism, and ideas about home and place, all of this with an eye toward revealing social inequalities and giving voice to those who are regularly overlooked. She is particularly interested in literary uses of oral histories, and in debates about what is considered to be nonfiction or fiction. She is currently the oral history intern at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum.

Laura Barnett (2013)

In 2013, I arrived at Columbia with a career in theater, performance art, film, and education. Having received my undergraduate degree in 1988 (AB Brown University; English – Creative Writing), being back in the classroom was a thrill. The professors, my cohort, classes within and outside of OHMA: extraordinary! Since receiving my MA, I have incorporated oral history into my teaching and artistic practices.  

Projects include: editing the commemorative book Saint Ann’s School; An Unofficial History – 1965-2015; oral history interview training for choreographer Meredith Monk’s House Foundation; oral history interview training for The Actor’s Fund/Performing Arts Legacy Project; leading a workshop on oral history and the virtual theater classroom for NY Academy of Teachers; and the site-specific performance piece We Can Find The Words, commissioned by the Brooklyn Public Library in March 2021 to recognize the one-year anniversary of NYC’s lockdown. As an Advisory Board Member of Equality Now’s Adolescent Girls’ Legal Defense Fund, I have directed several documentary theater pieces that advance the organization’s mission. 

My earlier work in experimental theater includes directing/producing at 59E59 Street, Judson Church, and chashama Experimental Theatre, where I curated Windows on 42nd Street, a six-month series of installations and performances for storefront windows in a transitioning Times Square. Performance pieces Inside/Out, Secret Confession Box, and Spinning were presented in NYC and Berlin. In the 90s, I toured with Love Theatre, performing at venues including London’s ICA, Budapest’s Katona József Színház and festivals in Belgium, Holland, and the former Yugoslavia. I also worked extensively with independent filmmaker, Amir Naderi, casting films presented in competition in festivals including Cannes and Venice. Earlier work in media includes casting/producing commercial photography. In a fifteen year career, clients included Swissair, Adidas, Ray Ban, Canon, Uniqlo, Volvo, Esquire, and IBM. 

A throughline in my life has been teaching teenagers. At Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, I have directed twenty-five productions and teach Acting and Performance Art. Additional teaching: Columbia University’s Summer Program for High School Students; PS 234 & PS 89, and guest workshops at Queens College and Parson’s School of Design. I currently live in Brooklyn, my hometown, with my husband and college-age son. 

Carrie Brave Heart (2013)

Carrie Brave Heart joins the OHMA program from South Dakota. She
received her BS in History/Art History from Northern Arizona University
in 2010. She has a great love of Native American History and is excited in the possibilities resulting from the use of Oral History to add to the telling or use in the revision of traditional western historical narrative. In 2010, she began a project pertaining to artwork contained in the David Humphreys Miller Collection. This ongoing project’s purpose has been to locate living descendants of a group of Northern Plains Native American women, who Miller drew individual untitled portraits of, in the 1930’s. Her ultimate goal is to create biographies for each of these women to accompany their portraits, through the use of oral history interviews. Her current thesis work in the OHMA program is the Indian Village at the New York State Fair.

Kate Brenner (2014)

Kate Brenner attended the University of Wisconsin, where she received a BA in Chinese and a certificate in Gender and Women's Studies. There she also developed an interest in folklore, and had her first exposure to oral history, editing interview transcriptions at the Wisconsin Veteran's Museum. During two years of AmeriCorps in Minneapolis, she ran after school classes and became interested in trying to find ways to get students to tell their own stories. When she moved to New York, she began an internship with City Lore, an organization dedicated to promoting New York's living cultural heritage. Kate is especially interested in the intersection of folklore and oral history.

Ellen Brooks (2012)

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Ellen Brooks (she/her/her) is an oral history producer and consultant who currently works with WiLS (Wisconsin Library Systems) on the IMLS grant-funded Accelerating Promising Practices project, mentoring and supporting a cohort of practitioners as they take on oral history initiatives, community digitization events, and other projects to document and share their unique local stories.

Prior to her current role, Ellen worked as the Oral Historian for the State Archives of North Carolina (January 2019 - August 2020) and as the Oral Historian for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum (2013-2018).

Ellen found her way to oral history through a passion for storytelling and public history. She graduated from the Oral History Master of Arts program at Columbia University in 2013. Prior to OHMA, she received BAs in History and Communications from Fordham University and interned at multiple cultural institutions, including the Chicago History Museum, the Chicago Cultural Alliance, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

Ellen is a founding member of the OHA Emerging Professionals Committee and holds a seat on the Columbia Oral History Alumni Association Board. She enjoys welcoming new voices into the oral history space - both practitioners and narrators. Ellen’s principle interests include archival practices, podcasting, digital humanities and the intersection of all these with oral history. 

K.O. Campbell (2011)

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K.O. Campbell grew up on Lookout Mountain, TN. She graduated from Pomona College in 2008 with a degree in English Literature. Among other things, she is interested in an intersection in Harlem. 

William Chapman (2013)

William Chapman is a California native and recent graduate of California State University, Fresno, with a B.A. in History. His previous oral history experience has centered around interviewing World War II veterans, and the development of the Central California War Veterans Oral History Project, based at CSU Fresno. Through the course of the OHMA program at Columbia University, William hopes to apply his historical training and love for the interview process to further his goal of one day working for The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

China Ching (2008)

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Bessie Dvora China Leipakumakaniokalani Ching (China Ching) was named according to Hawaiian and Jewish traditions and is honored to carry names from the matrilineal lines of both her parents. She has provided capacity-building assistance to Indigenous communities around the world with a particular focus on using media technologies and storytelling to promote Indigenous rights, support social and community change and to complement cultural documentation. China is currently an Associate Program Officer for the Christensen Fund, a private foundation based in San Francisco. She works on supporting and increasing Indigenous participation and representation in global processes affecting Indigenous rights and biocultural diversity.

China is a proud (and fierce) aunty and godmother and blessed to be the daughter and granddaughter of artists.

Sewon Chung Barrera (2012)

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Sewon Chung Barrera is a digital marketer, content strategist, and oral historian based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sewon currently manages the digital marketing department at the Exploratorium, a San Francisco-based museum of science, art, and human perception described by the New York Times as the most important science museum to have opened since the mid-20th century. She also serves as a Multilingual Language Advocate and communications consultant for Bay Area human rights advocacy groups and community organizations. Previously, Sewon led global content marketing campaigns at Samsung, and developed content strategies for startups and Fortune 500 companies at Brafton.

Sewon received a Master of Arts in Oral History from Columbia University in 2013. As a graduate student at OHMA, Sewon conducted oral history fieldwork at BLDG 92 in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and museum studies field work at the American Museum of Natural History. Her thesis on Central Park North, advised by Dr. Mabel O. Wilson from the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, culminated in an interactive exhibit experience launched digitally and through a pop-up installation in Brooklyn. Sewon also holds a dual B.A. in Literary & Cultural Studies and Sociology from The College of William & Mary.

More at www.sewonchung.com