#  Riley Sutherland 

Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

 

 

 



   ![Riley Sutherland](/sites/g/files/omnuum996/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/2024-07/Sutherland.Riley_photo.jpg?itok=-EXIawdC) 

 



 





 

*Salus Populi Project | Liberty, Missouri & Washington, D.C.*

Riley Sutherland is a rising second-year Ph.D. student in History with a secondary field in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies. At Harvard, her research focuses on nineteenth-century U.S. history, (Dis)ability Studies, the history of medicine, and feminist studies. She is currently working on a feminist history of nineteenth-century hysteria and the origins of physical therapy in the U.S. Beyond the classroom, she is active in campus disability justice activism.

A passionate public historian, Riley has worked for the National Archives at the Truman Presidential Library, the Clay County (Missouri) Historical Society, and the Pinckney Papers Project. She currently co-directs the Salus Populi Project (saluspopuli.org), a digital archiving and reparative genealogy project that works with descendants and K-12 students to digitize and transcribe Missouri United States Colored Troop pensions and to commemorate Missouri’s Black history. As part of this project, she attended the Public Digital Humanities Institute (PDHI) at the University of Kansas to learn about accessible and inclusive community-based project design.

This summer, Riley will work to apply the skills she developed at PDHI by working with the Salus Populi Project to digitize Black Civil War veterans’ pension files, create a public-facing digital archive, connect students and descendants through a crowd-sourcing program, and work with local artists and teachers to develop local educational programming.



 

 

 





 

 

- ## Fellowship Recipients
    
     [2024 Fellows](/fellowship-recipients/2024-fellows)