Saying Goodbye – Kristin Jacobsen

When the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media runs a job search for a project manager, it’s pretty common to get applicants who have an undergraduate or master’s degree in history. We’re always happy to get applicants who also have museum experience or familiarity with Omeka.

It’s a lot more unusual to get an applicant who was the commanding officer of a guided missile cruiser.

Kristin Jacobsen came to RRCHNM by way of the U.S. Navy and an M.A. internship with our local history partner, Historic Blenheim House. When we needed a project manager for our Digital Arnhem World War II postal history project, she stood out from the crowd and we were thrilled to hire her.

For the past three years, Kristin has been an invaluable member of the RRCHNM community. Her work as a project manager has covered everything from workflow management and project planning to data curation and cleaning to publishing results and articles, all while interfacing with large and ever-fluctuating project teams. Between major projects, she also chipped in to help with several other center projects; for example, she worked with me on an Omeka exhibit of 17th century plague bills and was invaluable in sorting out registrations for the DH2024 conference we hosted last summer (you all also have Kristin to thank for the videos that are now on YouTube!)  

Most recently, Kristin was the full time project manager on our Graffiti House project to digitize and make available civil war graffiti from several Virginia local history sites. This spring she arranged a tour of Historic Blenheim House for center staff and students to see their amazing graffiti and get a better sense of the important work the project was doing.

As is common in soft-funded research centers, people come and go. But Kristin has made an indelible mark on our center and in particular the undergraduate and graduate careers of the students she’s worked with here. Perhaps there is no better evidence of this than the fact that she is spending her last official day working at RRCHNM by serving as a judge at the National History Day competition. We are going to miss her and wish her the best of luck in Pittsburgh!