Consulting

Over nearly thirty years, I have consulted with a wide variety of local, state, and national organizations and agencies on a range of projects, principally in historical research and writing, federal preservation documentation, exhibition development, and interpretive planning. A sampling of some of my consulting projects is here (PDF).

Most recently, I have been developing special interest in how Humanities approaches and perspectives can be applied in the area of Healthcare and Healthy Aging. If you’d like to learn more about my work in this space, visit my Health Humanities page.

Current Contracted Projects

  • Developing the Nancy Rexford Visual Index (Institutional Insights and Innovation, University of Connecticut): working with a team of costume historians and tech specialists, the project seeks to preserve the groundbreaking scholarship of costume historian and curator Nancy Rexford into a digital resource.
  • Women in the American Revolution (National Park Service), with co-PI Emily Whitted: In association with the US semiquincentennial in 2026, the project, which involves an advisory panel and five subcontracted contributors, synthesizes and summarizes the main themes in recent scholarship and develops five case studies in collaboration with park unites across the NPS Northeast Region, to surface new stories and show how they illuminate important new thinking about women’s lived experience before, during and after the Revolutionary War.
In 2012, Marla and three co-authors—including Anne Mitchell Whisnant, pictured here—released Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service, a multi-year study funded by the NPS Chief Historian’s office and hosted by the Organization of American Historians. In 2013, Imperiled Promise  won the National Council on Public History prize for Excellence in Consulting.