Hi! I'm Pete
I'm an incoming History and Library Science (HiLS) master's student at the University of Maryland. I also recently graduated with a BA in US History and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.
Currently, my primary career goal is to work in either archives or academic libraries. I am also excited to continue historical research in grad school and to find ways to use technology to support humanities research on campus.
On the historical side, I am primarily interested in United States social history. I have been continually fascinated during lectures by the ways in which people have interacted and created communities, even through adversity, and I have been fortunate to have had several opportunities to use that as the basis for research projects in undergrad.
Historical Research
I will be starting my master's in Fall 2025! I intend to research queer communities in the twentieth-century United States, although I am also generally interested in researching United States social history.
My undergrad capstone paper was on transgender community-building in the US from the 1960s through the 1980s. The paper's primary argument was that, on a geographical scale, trans people at the time could be categorized as either being in no trans communities, local trans communities (neighborhood or city), or large-scale/national trans communities.
I presented the paper at the Phi Alpha Theta (History Honor Society) Biennial Convention in January 2025, and it was published in the Spring 2025 issue of Clio's Scroll, the undergraduate history journal at UC Berkeley.
Libraries & Archives
Working in libraries and archives is currently my main career goal! I have experience using physical and digital archival collections as a researcher, and am eager to start my coursework and gain more experience.
With physical collections, I have experience handling correspondence, memos, meeting minutes, photographs, scrapbooks, and more. The physical materials I have used in my research have ranged anywhere from 10 years old to roughly 100 years old. In addition to handling the materials, I also have experience using online finding aids and communicating with archivists to discuss my research and help find other relevant materials.
Digital Humanities
I have a multidisciplinary background in both humanities and technical fields and earned a BA in History and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Maryland. I am very interested in combining these different aspects of my education in my career.
During undergrad, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work on Dangerous Harbor, a digital humanities project led by a team at Virginia Tech researching runaway indentured servants and enslaved people in colonial Virginia and Maryland. I am very grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the project, and I am looking forward to working on more digital humanities projects in grad school!