Karen McCally, PhD
Home:
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Where I’m from:
Columbia, Maryland
Other places I’ve lived:
New York City
Washington, DC
Rochester, New York
Where I’ve gone to school (and for what):
Columbia University, BA (European, Jewish, Chinese, and American history)
University of Rochester, PhD (American history)
Certificates I’ve earned:
Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator; Graphic Design, all from Noble Desktop
Professional groups I belong to:
The Photo Managers, a gem of a resource for anyone interested in collecting, preserving, organizing, and sharing their photo collection
About this picture: Now that our two children are grown, my husband and I can travel off-season. That’s me in Bergamo, Italy, atop the Citta Alta.
About
I’m Karen McCally, and Pastoria History Studio is my one-woman operation.
I got interested in my own ancestors when I discovered online resources such as Ancestry, Rootsweb, and FamilySearch.
But I was also a graduate student in American history, working toward a PhD and potentially a career in research and teaching. From that training, I realized there are rich bodies of literature in cultural and social history that can tell us a lot more about the lives of ordinary people than what can be gleaned strictly through their own paper trails.
I completed my PhD at the University of Rochester, spent two years working with artifacts at a local historical society, and then returned to campus to spend the next 15 as a writer and editor for the university’s magazine. It was a fortuitous path, from which I gained 15 years of experience interviewing a wide range of people—students, scholars, and alumni in fields from physics to flamenco dancing. And then telling their stories to lay audiences. I’ve collected a few of my favorite pieces with a strong historical and biographical bent.
For more about my background and education, visit me on LinkedIn.