The Public History Project is an interdisciplinary research consortium based within the estuarial region that is home to New York and Newark. We are historians, ecologists, cartographers, artists, educators, culture bearers and linguists partnering to challenge the established colonial narratives of this region’s history and to transform how we tell our stories, while in the process, caring for our land and waters.
Our Team
Jack Tchen / Founding Director
Jack (John Kuo Wei) Tchen is a historian, curator, and writer devoted to anti-racist, anti-colonialist democratic participatory storytelling, scholarship, and opening up archives, museums, organizations, and classroom spaces to the stories and realities of those excluded and deemed “unfit” in master narratives. Professor Tchen has been honored to be the Inaugural Clement A Price Chair of Public History & Humanities at Rutgers University – Newark and Director of the Clement Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture & the Modern Experience, since Fall 2018…
Kerry Hardy / Lead Researcher & Cartographer
Kerry Hardy is a researcher, eco-historian, and author who studies the human ecology of pre-Contact Native Americans, primarily through geographic and linguistic analysis. He is the Lead Researcher and Cartographer at the Public History Project, the Stewardship Coordinator at the Vinalhaven Land Trust, and author of “Notes on a Lost Flute: A Field Guide to the Wabanaki” that delves into the Native American foodways, languages, place names and ecologies of Maine in 2009…
Teresa Vega / Advisor
Teresa Vega has dedicated nearly two decades to researching her family history and genealogy. In 2010, she delved deeply into this pursuit, combining traditional genealogy with genetic genealogy research. Through her efforts, Teresa successfully traced several maternal mixed-race lines back to Colonial New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia. Notably, she uncovered direct ancestral ties to one of the original 11 Angolans arriving in New Amsterdam in 1626, the first Afro-Dutch who arrived in 1630, the first enslaved Malagasy who arrived in the mid-1600s, and the Munsee (Ramapough) Lenape, whose land was colonized. Her academic background includes Bachelor’s Degrees in Anthropology and Asian Studies from Bowdoin College, where she also served as an adjunct professor in Cultural Anthropology while pursuing her doctoral program at CUNY Graduate School and University Center. This cultural anthropology expertise has significantly enriched her exploration of ancestral roots.
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Beatrice Glow / Arts Liaison
Beatrice Glow is a New York and Bay Area-based multidisciplinary artist working in service of public history and just futures. An American of Taiwanese heritage, she interrogates the visual languages of luxury and power through Asian diasporic and anti-colonial perspectives. Working in allyship with Indigenous culture bearers and co-laboring with researchers, her projects on the exploitation of botanical life reveals the contemporary ramifications of colonialism, capitalism, and inequitable trade networks.
Community Partners
Chief Vincent Mann
Chief Mann is the Turtle Clan Chief of the Ramapough Lenape Nation, which encompasses Passaic County NJ, Warwick, and surrounding areas in New York. Chief Mann has held the title of Turtle Clan Chief for approximately twelve years. For the past five years, he has worked with the NYU Environmental Studies department. In that time, he participated in the construction and implementation of a community health survey focused on identifying and addressing health concerns within his community. To honor Chief Mann’s efforts to shed light on his community’s efforts to fight back after the Ford toxic dumping, he was awarded the Russ Berry Foundations highest award of Unsung Hero…
Michaeline Picaro Mann
Michaeline Picaro Mann is a member of the Ramapough Lunaape Nation Turtle Clan. She is a knowledge bearer and advocates for the Turtle Clan. With Chief Vincent Mann, Picaro Mann has been at the forefront of the Ramapough’s environmental justice organizing efforts. She has worked with NYU Environmental Studies, contributing to their shared projects, her nursing expertise, research skills, and perspective on traditional healing…
Councillor Gordon Peters
Gordon Peters is a member of the Turtle Clan and is (Lunaapeew) Lenape from the Eelünaapéewi Lahkéewiit (Delaware Nation). He currently serves as a Councillor for Lenape Community Eelunapeewi Lahkawiit. Councillor Peters has worked with First Nations, both in a political and non-political capacity, for over four decades applying his organizing knowledge to promote and develop indigenous sovereignty. He formerly held the position of Deputy Grand Chief, an elected position within the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians. Previously, Councillor Peters served as Ontario Regional Chief of Assembly of First Nations for 12 years and acted as head of the AIAI for 4 years. He is an author, educator, and is often invited to speak on First Nations and community economic and cultural development issues…
Collaborators and Contributors
Alex Peabody, Alexandre Girardeau, Audra Simpson, Brent Stonefish, Claudia Sepulveda, Conor Quinn, Doris Brossard, Eric Sanderson, Frances Pollitt Sarver, George Stonefish, Jessica Hernandez, Kerri Schlottman, Kim Fisher, Leora Fuller, Lize Mogel, Mabel Wilson, Mehreen Mian, Mora McLean, Norris Branham, Sam Hege
The Public History Project is generously supported by the Ford Foundation and is grateful for our close collaboration with the Clement Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience, Rutgers University – Newark.
