Olivia Jacobs

Olivia “Liv” Jacobs is a Ph.D. candidate in the American and New England Studies Program. They study communities that arise through shared participatory performance practices such as social dancing and entertainment spectacles. Liv is a performance ethnographer whose most recent work centers Contra Dance and other folk communities through lenses of cultural memory, temporality, and regional studies. Their M.A. thesis, “Contra(ry) Narratives: Dance History as Embodied Knowledge and Archived Practice,” examined the genesis stories of Contra Dance communities in New England and the Southern Appalachian Borderlands for their cultural implications. Their current line of inquiry examines the relationship between American Folk Revivals and their impact on related waves of Civil Rights activism. To learn more about Jacob’s research and publications, visit their webpage.

In Summer 2023, Liv was named a 2023 Summer Graduate Intern in the Social Sciences. A collaborative program between the Center for Innovation in Social Science (CISS), the Office of the Associate Provost for Graduate Affairs, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GRS) the  program provides stipend-supported summer internships aimed at introducing Ph.D. students in Social Sciences fields and related disciplines to career opportunities at institutions beyond academia. Liv will be working with the Narrative Office at the Center for Antiracist Research where they hope to deepen the roots of their scholarship in antiracist policy and action.  They are working to cultivate skills in public facing scholarship to communicate the importance of cultural work in effecting social change.