In July 2019, I became the director of the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at the Pennsylvania State University, taking the helm from the first and only former head, William Blair. You can read about this transition here.

Established in 1998, the Richards Center is an initiative of the Department of History and the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State University. The Center has emerged as a unique resource for interpreting and reflecting on life in nineteenth-century America, with a focus on slavery, war, the freedom struggle, and their contemporary legacies. The Center stimulates work in the field by sponsoring graduate and faculty research, a postdoctoral fellowship, public lecture series, and undergraduate internships. The Center is also home to The Journal of the Civil War Era and organizes the biennial conference of the Society of Civil War Historians. In 2005 the Center was awarded a $1 million National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) We The People Challenge Grant.

As Director, I oversee several scholarly lectures and workshops, including serving as the series editor for the Steven and Janice Brose Lectures in the Civil War Era at University of North Carolina Press.

The Richards Center also hosts programs for undergraduates of color interested in pursuing a doctorate in history, graduate students in history at Penn State, and post-doctoral fellowships in African American history and the history of the Civil War Era.