Chris Cynn, Ph.D.

Lab Director

Chris Cynn is an associate professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies. Her interdisciplinary research draws from gender, queer of color, and cultural studies to explore literary and visual productions related to illness, health, memory, and archives. She has worked as a full-time community organizer and as a video producer, and is the author of Prevention: Gender, Sexuality, HIV, and the Media in Côte d’Ivoire, the co-producer of a documentary on a human rights trial in Haiti, and the co-producer and director of a number of short videos.

Michael Dickinson, Ph.D.

Co-director, East Marshall Street Oral History Project

Dr. Michael Lawrence Dickinson is 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.

Maggie Goddard, Ph.D.

Associate Director

Maggie Unverzagt Goddard is the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow for the East Marshall Street Well Project. 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, Ph.D.

Associate Director

Daniel Sunshine is the Postdoctoral Fellow in History for the East Marshall Street Well Project. 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.