Meet the Mellon Fellows: Dr. Laura Dominguez

Dr. Laura Dominguez

University of Southern California
PhD, History

Host Site: NPS Intermountain Region Park History Program with support from the NPS Intermountain Region Interpretation, Education, Youth & Volunteers Program and the NPS Intermountain Region Heritage Partnerships Program
Fellowship Title: New Perspectives in Transcontinental Railroad History Fellowship
Project Description: Dr. Dominguez will use the lens of the Transcontinental Railroad to explore themes of labor, western identity, and Indigenous sovereignty. The Fellow will document sites worthy of preservation, engage partners, and update park interpretation

Bio:

Laura Dominguez is a historian of race, heritage, and placemaking in the American West. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and joins the New Perspectives in Transcontinental Railroad History Team as its postdoctoral fellow. Her dissertation examined the making and repair of settler histories, memory sites, and heritage practices in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Los Angeles.

Dr. Dominguez holds a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a master’s degree in historic preservation from USC. She previously worked in education and advocacy at San Francisco Heritage and the Los Angeles Conservancy and serves on the boards of Latinos in Heritage Conservation and the California Preservation Foundation. From 2019-2021, she belonged to the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office Civic Memory Working Group. Her writing has appeared in the Western Historical Quarterly, Journal of American History, California History, and Lost L.A, and she is an affiliated scholar with the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

This project was made possible through the National Park Service by a grant from the National Park Foundation through generous support from the Mellon Foundation. The Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship program is administered through a partnership between NPS, NPF, and American Conservation Experience.