UNH Today

This fall, Sara Clarke-Vivier, a graduate of the Ph.D. program in Curriculum and Instruction, will begin a position as an Assistant Professor of Education at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. Dr. Clarke-Vivier joins a growing department, and will teach educational foundations courses to undergraduates from a broad array of disciplines and with a wide range of career goals. 

At Washington, Dr. Clarke-Vivier will continue the research she began at UNH, pursuing questions of how educators inside and outside of schools design learning experiences around difficult or controversial material. Her dissertation research explored how secondary educators and museum workers created curriculum around an art museum installation of modern war photojournalism. This project earned Dr. Clarke-Vivier the Dissertation Year Fellowship while at the University of New Hampshire. 

In collaboration with Dr. Ellie Harrison-Buck in the UNH Anthropology department, Dr. Clarke-Vivier will spend this upcoming year working with the people of Crooked Tree, Belize as they prepare to open a public history museum in their community. This museum aims to center the historical and cultural legacies of the Kriol people, decedents from enslaved Africans brought to the country by Europeans in the 18th and 19th century. In a country where the legacy of British colonialism remains strong and a booming tourism market privileges ancient Maya and colonial histories, Kriol history remains under-explored in public educational spaces, as well as in the national school curriculum. Dr. Clarke-Vivier will support local educators and historians in the design and development of exhibit and curriculum materials that make this rich history accessible to multiple audiences.