About the speaker:

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Alison Rose Jefferson, M.H.C.|Ph.D. 

Alison Rose Jefferson is a historian, heritage conservation consultant and third generation Californian. She uses her research interests in American history are focused on the African American experience, heritage conservation, spatial justice, and cultural tourism to reconstruct stories which have been left out or marginalized the telling of American history as a tool in the struggle for social justice. Her recent book, Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era was awarded the 2020 Miriam Matthews Ethnic History Award by the Los Angeles City Historical Society for its exceptional contributions to the greater understanding and awareness of regional history.

 

Dr. Jefferson is currently working on producing an exhibition around her book content for the California African American Museum in Los Angeles which will be up from February to June 2023. She was a 2021–22 Getty Conservation Institute Scholar in Residence based in Los Angeles where she worked on research for a manuscript and public interpretation programming around the historical African American experience in Los Angeles’ Venice district in California’s coastal zone and ways to preserve it using heritage conservation efforts and public policies.

 

Dr. Jefferson recently finished work as a Historian on Santa Monica’s Belmar History + Art and the Angels Walk LA Central Avenue heritage trail, applied history projects which both reconstruct and reinsert the historical African American experience in the regional landscape and American identity. Dr. Jefferson and other contributors were honored with the 2021 Cultural Resource Award for the Belmar History + Art project’s civic life contributions by the Santa Monica Conservancy.

 

Dr. Jefferson  earned her B.A. in Sociology at Pomona College, her M.H.C. at University of Southern California and her Ph.D. in History at University of California, Santa Barbara. Her work has been noted in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, LeMonde, Sky News, CBS and ABC LA news and KCET-LA, among other American and international media outlet programs. Learn more about Dr. Jefferson’s work at: www.alisonrosejefferson.com.