Other PennPraxis Projects

From 2015 to 2021, I worked on several heritage-centric projects for PennPraxis, the center for applied research, outreach, and practice at the Weitzman School at the University of Pennsylvania. In collaboration with faculty and graduate students, I was the project manager, researcher, and/or community engagement specialist on projects such as:

• Neighborhood Preservation Toolkit: I was a co-project manager and lead author for the toolkit, which emerged from PennPraxis’ Historic Preservation Citizen Engagement Project (supported by the William Penn Foundation). Created in partnership with a network of 21 community liaisons, the Neighborhood Preservation Toolkit is a free resource to build a larger, broader constituency for preservation in Philadelphia. It is available in English, Chinese, and Spanish.

• Pennovation Historic Research and Interpretation Strategy: PennPraxis was engaged by the University of Pennsylvania’s Facilities and Real Estate Services (FRES) to research the history of the Pennovation Works campus, Penn’s hub for research and innovation. Pennovation Works occupies a 23-acre campus that has been a hub of industry since the 19th century. Based on the archival research, the PennPraxis team developed interpretation strategies to help enhance FRES’ development of the site, relating its present role in innovation to its industrial legacy. 

• Civic Infrastructure Research and Summit: PennPraxis published a series of white papers about sustaining and sharing civic investment in parks, libraries, and other public assets. I contributed research to the white papers and helped coordinate the resulting summit—both of which called on practitioners, advocates, funders, and designers to think about the unfolding of projects at multiple scales (site, system and policy), over a longer timeframe.

• Maxfield Engine House (Boonton, NJ) Preservation Plan: The project created a plan to guide a local nonprofit’s preservation and reuse of the Maxfield Engine House, constructed in 1893. The firehouse occupies a prominent location in the center of Boonton, NJ’s Main Street Historic District, and has served several functions since the town’s fire engines became too large to use it. I was the project manager for the plan, working in collaboration with a graduate of the Weitzman School’s Historic Preservation Program.