Join us on Thursday, September 8th as the Museum of History and UPC Insurance welcome Dr. Rachel Sanderson and her presentation, “La Florida: The Interactive Digital Archives of the Americas.”

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Rachel L. Sanderson serves as the Associate Director of La Florida: The Interactive Digital Archive of the Americas, a position she has held since the project’s inception in 2016. She earned a BFA from the University of Tampa and a BA in History from the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. In 2017, Sanderson graduated with an MLA in Florida Studies from the USFSP. Her thesis project focused on the lives of two noble women in sixteenth-century Florida, one a young Spanish woman and one a female Indian chief. Sanderson has presented her research at several national conferences. After working in the field for five years, Sanderson was admitted into the Ph.D. program in History at the University of South Florida. In her first year in the doctoral program, Sanderson was one of just eight graduate students selected to participate in the prestigious Spanish Colonial Borderlands workshop, sponsored by The Huntington Library in San Marino, California. In 2022, Sanderson received the Leland Hawes Essay prize for the best paper in Florida studies.

Teaching La Florida with the Interactive Digital Archive of the Americas will highlight the ways in which rigorous academic research in collaboration with cutting-edge technology can bring the history of daily life in colonial Florida to a global audience.

The presentation will focus on an initiative titled, Lost Voices from America’s Oldest Parish Archive, 1594-1821, a project designed to make St. Augustine’s diocesan archives accessible to a global audience. Together, these ecclesiastical records provide unparalleled insight into the daily lives of colonial St. Augustine’s multi-ethnic inhabitants, and the relationships between the settlement’s African, European, and Native American residents. The collaborative two-year project is designed to engage a global audience, specialists and non-specialists alike. La Florida’s user-friendly platform makes these records freely accessible for teachers, students, scholars, genealogists, and the general public.

Presented by UPC Insurance, Happy Hour with the Historian is frequently sold out, so reservations are required. Admission without a reservation cannot be guaranteed. Reservations close the day of the event.  

Members: FREE | Not-yet-members: $10

Cash bar provided.

Doors open at 6pm. Program begins at 6:30pm.

Seating is limited, reserve your seats today!