Work With Me
About My Work
A few years ago, I found a line in an 1878 Cincinnati newspaper about a Chinese laundry owner named Jo Sing testifying in a robbery trial. He was allowed to speak—but only after proving, under a religious oath, that he was worth believing.
The record let him in. It just made him earn it first.
I keep coming back to that story because it captures much of what I do as a public historian. Some histories are not entirely absent from the archive. They survive in fragments: a newspaper clipping, a census line, a city directory, a court record, an address, a photograph, or a memory passed through a family.
I follow those fragments.
My own research focuses on Asian and Pacific Islander American history in Cincinnati and the Ohio River Watershed, but I also work with museums, libraries, universities, nonprofits, families, writers, and other organizations that need histories researched, preserved, interpreted, or brought back into public view.
Historical records were not created on equal terms for every community. My work asks what the record tells us, what it leaves out, and what becomes possible when archival research is placed alongside oral history, family memory, photographs, material culture, and community knowledge.
Historical Research & Consulting
My core practice is historical investigation — newspapers, census records, city directories, court records, and other primary sources, followed until they answer the question you're asking. Projects range from a single research memo to a full institutional assignment, with particular focus on Asian and Pacific Islander American history, Cincinnati and the Ohio River Valley, and histories traditional archives tend to leave out.
Genealogy Lookups & Family Research
You may not need a four-hundred-person family tree. Sometimes you just want to know where someone lived, what they did, or why a record spells their name three different ways — and I'll tell you what the evidence supports, and where it simply runs out.
Oral History
Sometimes the most important record is still living. I record oral histories for families and institutions alike — from one conversation with a grandparent to a full community-history project like the 52 Voices Project — with care for consent, context, and shared authority over the story.
Museums, Exhibits & Community Archives
An exhibit can repeat the same silence it's trying to correct — just with better lighting. I help museums and cultural organizations research the people, places, and objects behind an exhibit, and help communities build archives from the materials that never make it into a traditional repository.
Speaking, Panels & Workshops
Historical research shouldn't end in a folder on my computer. I speak on Asian and Pacific Islander American history, migration, foodways, and archival silence at libraries, universities, and conferences, and lead hands-on workshops that teach people to do this kind of research themselves.