I am currently a fourth year PhD candidate (ABD) at West Virginia University. I received my Bachelors Degree in Geography (2001) and my Masters degree in History (2011) from Youngstown State University. I am interested in U.S. Labor and Working Class history. My research focuses on the influence of politics, economics, business, and labor on the development of America’s public/private welfare state. I am curious about labor’s role in both pushing for a stronger public welfare system and labor’s efforts to collectively bargain for privatized pension and social insurance benefits during and immediately after World War II. I am also interested in the different types of private welfare plans established through collective bargaining as well as how much control and influence the union had on the implementation and administration of those plans. Finally, I am interested in how union members thought about their pension and social insurance plans once they were achieved and throughout the era of deindustrialization. 

Location

Morgantown, WV

Disciplines

• History

Affiliation

West Virginia University