ICW Celebrates Alumni
Launching summer 2023, ICW seeks to connect with alumni to celebrate developments in your careers. We look forward to hearing from alumni via email at icw@dornsife.edu, where you can share your news and contact information.
Christina Copland received her PhD in history in 2018 and now works as a Genealogist Researcher at Ancestry.com. There, she helps people find their roots and track down relatives, often all the way back to the 1700s. Her dissertation, titled “Faith, Finances and the Remaking of Southern Californian Fundamentalism, 1910 – 1950,” ties together Protestant fundamentalism, the urban history of Los Angeles, and the relationship between capitalism and religion.
Will Cowan
Dr. Will Cowan accepted an appointment as an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Cal Poly Pomona starting fall 2023.
Will previously served as a postdoctoral researcher with ICW, focusing on the West on Fire Project. He studies the history of weather and water extremes in the North American West. His dissertation tells the environmental and social histories of the Big Winter of 1862 and presents a broad overview of atmospheric rivers, elemental meteorological forces in the Pacific Slope’s past, present, and future.
Laura Dominguez
Dr. Laura Dominguez begins a National Park Service Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship in fall 2023. She’ll be joining the New Perspectives in Transcontinental Railroad History team in the Intermountain Regional Office.
Laura is a historian of race, heritage, and placemaking in the American West. Her dissertation examined the making and unmaking of settler histories, memory sites, and heritage practices in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Los Angeles. She previously held positions at San Francisco Heritage and the Los Angeles Conservancy and currently 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.
Laura is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the USC Mellon Humanities & the University of the Future Ph.D. Fellowship; Del Amo Doctoral Fellowship; and Bert Fireman and Janet Fireman Award from the Western History Association. Her work has appeared in the Western Historical Quarterly, Journal of American History, California History, and Lost L.A.
