Sharon M. Leon is an Associate Professor of History at Michigan State University, where she is developing projects on digital public history and digital networking projects related to enslaved communities in Maryland. [Curriculum Vitae] She is a principal participant in MSU’s Consortium on Critical Diversity in a Digital Age Research initiative. Leon received her bachelors of arts degree in American Studies from Georgetown University in 1997 and her doctorate in American Studies from the University of Minnesota in 2004. Her first book, An Image of God: the Catholic Struggle with Eugenics, was published by University of Chicago Press (May 2013). Also, she directs the Omeka web publishing project, which includes Omeka Classic, Omeka S, Omeka.net, and Omeka Services.
Prior to joining the History Department at MSU, Leon spent over thirteen years in George Mason University’s History Department at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media as Director of Public Projects, where she oversaw collaborations with library, museum, and archive partners from around the country. In the past, she has taken a leadership role in the following projects:
- Histories of the National Mall
- Scripto: Crowdsourcing Documentary Transcription
- September 11 Digital Archive
- Bracero History Archive
- Martha Washington: a Life
- Mobile for Museums
- teachinghistory.org
- Historical Thinking Matters
- The Object of History: Behind the Scenes with the Curators at the National Museum of American History
- World History Matters
- Women in World History
Interviews
- “Sharon Leon, Part 1: A Better History of Digital History,” AHR Interview, January 15, 2020.
- “Sharon Leon, Part 2: Historians and Datta,” AHR Interview, January 15, 2020.
- Melissa Dinsman, “The Digital In the Humanities: An Interview with Sharon Leon,” LARB, July 10, 2016.