Ellen Brooks (2012)

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. 

Lisa Polay (2010)

Oral history is catalyzed by the ability of a narrator to situate and contextualize his/herself through time.  Memory is the dynamic and fragile infrastructure of that collection process.

Lisa Polay’s graduate research began as a historiographical website examining the mechanical and cultural production of remembering and forgetting.  From scientific theory through fiction, the site drew together memory research and theories across varying disciplines, highlighting the intersection of biology, neurology, culture and technology. 

Trying to remember last Thursday and wondering how babies know how to use cellphones is all still a conundrum to her, as she continues to collect bits and pieces at halflifeofmemory.com. She supplemented her studies with courses in Medical Humanities and Organizational Sociology. Lisa is a member of the inaugural design team leading the IoT/Lincoln Center Film Festival collaboration through the Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab.

Lisa also teaches technology to older adults and listens to high school students through StoryCorps U.  She recently completed an oral history for New England’s oldest art association and the collection is to be deposited in the New Hampshire State Archives. Those experiences informed a paper she presented at the 2015 OHMAR conference at Rutgers concerning cultural bias towards older adults with acute or chronic illness.

For over fifteen years, Lisa administered and cultivated cultural projects: first through several years in advertising and then throughout a decade at The Museum of Modern Art. None of this had anything to do with going to Columbia University to study oral history, yet all of it has informed her scholarship. Her work has brought her across the globe - to all the continents and many of their countries - yet four places escaped any route: Russia, Ireland, Hawaii and North Dakota. Mystery still beckons. 

Taylor Schwarzkopf (2011)

Taylor Schwarzkopf is originally from Boise, Idaho. He is interested in the stories and lives of New York’s dwindling working and middle classes.  His work is currently focused on the histories of the men and women of the Transport Workers Union Local 100. Taylor is interested in adding to the collective body of 20th Century New York City and working class history through the lens of this particularly “New York” group.  He has been a New Yorker since 2003.