Danielle Raad

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Assistant Professor of History and Museum Studies

Danielle Raad is an Assistant Professor of History and Museum Studies. She is a public historian, anthropologist, archaeologist, and curator with a focus on how people in the present make meaning from the material culture—art, artifacts, and historic sites—of the past.

Dr. Raad is the author of Above the Oxbow: Stories Entangled with a Mountain, published in April 2026 by West Virginia University Press. The book is a study of place attachment on Mount Holyoke, a mountain in Western Massachusetts. It explores how visitors over two centuries have forged relationships with the mountain through various activities, including engaging with historic narratives of the site at the Summit House, a former hotel turned museum. Above the Oxbowpresents a local and public history while illustrating how a mountain can become special to people and how attachments to place are mediated by material culture and influenced by collective, family, and personal memory.

Prior to joining the faculty at UGA, Dr. Raad held positions as the Curator and Assistant Director of the Stanford University Archaeology Collections and as the Cullman-Payson Postdoctoral Fellow in Academic Affairs and Outreach at the Yale University Art Gallery. She has also previously worked as an academic advisor, a study abroad coordinator, a community college chemistry instructor, and a high school physics teacher.

Prof. Raad teaches courses in Museum Studies Program, including Museum Ethics (MUSE 5730/7730) which discusses NAGPRA and other issues relevant to Native American Studies.

Education:

Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2021

M.Ed. Secondary Education, Lesley University, 2016

M.S. Archaeological Materials, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015

M.A. Chemistry, Harvard University, 2012

B.Sc. Chemistry, Brown University, 2010