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Staff

Principal Investigator: Max Krochmal, Ph.D., Professor of History and Director of Justice Studies

Mellon Postdoctoral Research Associate: Rafael Delgadillo, Ph.D.

Advisory Board

Thomas J. Adams, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies,

Leah Bailey, Community and Political Organizer,

Sarah Fouts, Ph.D., Associate Professor of American Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore County ()

Edith Romero, Organizer,

Ben Zucker, Co-Founder and Co-Director,

The lab’s first project seeks to recover and preserve the activist cultures of two broad categories of essential laborers in the city: 1) tourism and hospitality, including hotel, restaurant, and other services such as musicians, cultural workers, and related construction and day laborers that are integral to the city’s economic base in tourism; and 2) healthcare workers. Both groups are making headlines in recent years as their unions have achieved unprecedented victories.

This project uses oral history and kindred methods to publicly document the history and present of essential workers’ own collective organizing in New Orleans, a city in the crosshairs of climate change and suffering extreme inequities further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our team of academic researchers partners with representatives from local unions, workers’ centers, non-profits, and community-based storytellers