Dr. Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan

Rutgers University

Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan is Assistant Teaching Professor and Coordinator of Public History in the History Department at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Leicester and an MA in Modern History from Queens University Belfast. She researches poverty, labor, mobility, crime and punishment in the early American northeast, and is the author of Vagrants and Vagabonds: Poverty and Mobility in the Early American Republic (New York University Press, 2019). Her next book project explores the evolution of the poverty line through the subsistence activities of people experiencing poverty in early America.

As a practicing public historian, she has previously worked as an archivist and research analyst for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Archives, and with museums, archives, and libraries in the US and the UK curating exhibits, managing archival collections, and creating inclusive public programming. She is co-chairing the New Jersey Historical Commission’s Advisory Council on the state’s semi-centennial commemoration, and recently received the Commission’s Award of Recognition for Outstanding Service to Public Knowledge and Preservation of the History of New Jersey. She is currently working on a project about historical materialism in public history interpretation and commemorations.