I’m a documentarian and oral historian based in Queens, NY. I work as the Community Coordinator of the Queens Memory Project at Queens Public Library and am pursuing a Master of Library Science at Queens College CUNY, where I’m researching participatory models for civic journalism and public library-based archives. Prior to my library life, I worked as a producer at Retro Report, a nonprofit documentary news organization.
This summer, I’ll be presenting my research at the Society of American Archivists’ Annual Meeting and speaking at the Advanced Institute at The Oral History Center at UC Berkeley. In the fall, I’ll be at the Oral History Association’s Annual Meeting and the New York Library Association’s Annual Conference.
I teach Spoken Stories, a four-part workshop on oral history interviewing for Atlas Obscura. If you have an interview or a project in mind (or just want to learn more), I hope you’ll join.
I’m always happy to talk about oral history, participatory archiving, civic journalism, and the borough of Queens. Send a note to hello (at) meralagish (dot) com. I don’t tweet much but you can follow me at @meralagish.