Olivia Brown, Executive Director
Olivia Brown is a longtime lover of history from the time she was a young girl. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in History and American Studies from the University of Virginia, and a Master’s Degree in Public History from the University of South Carolina where her thesis research focused on the intersections of Jewish and Southern foodways. She has worked previously as a Tour Guide at James Monroe’s Highland and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and as Community Programs Manager for the Bucks County Historical Society. Her public history work includes volunteering for Historic Columbia and the Columbia Jewish Heritage Initiative, where her research was published in the 2023 book, “Kugels and Collards: Stories of Food, Family, and Tradition in Jewish South Carolina.” In addition to spending her days at the McIntire building with ACHS, Olivia runs a public and private events company in Charlottesville called Trivia with Olivia, and functions informally as her own family’s genealogist and photo archivist. Though not a Charlottesville or Albemarle County native, she has called this area home on-and-off for almost 10 years and is ready for many more!
Miranda Burnett, Research Librarian
Miranda came of age in the desert Southwest and relocated to the East Coast at the turn of the last century. She received a MA degree in French from the University of South Carolina, and after teaching high school French and Latin for a few years, earned an MS in Library and Information Science at Florida State University. She moved to the Charlottesville area in 2008, becoming involved with the Scottsville Museum, acting in (and sometimes directing and co-directing) the museum’s annual Twilight Tours production. She joined JMRL in 2016 as a substitute Reference Librarian, moving to Northside Library as a Reference Librarian in 2017 before enthusiastically accepting the position of Historical Collections Librarian with JMRL and ACHS. For the past 5 years Miranda has also been a guide at James Monroe’s Highland, with a short stint as a guide at James Madison’s Montpelier. Her love of history and research led her and a colleague to explore the question “What happened to the enslaved families James Monroe sold to Florida in 1828?”, which was featured in a New York Times article (July 8, 2019). Her research article “Florida Bound: Casa Bianca Plantation’s Enslaved People,” which examines this Florida plantation, was published by the Florida Historical Quarterly (Vol. 98 no. 2), and all of the data associated with her research was submitted to Enslaved.org (Burnett, Miranda R. W. and Martin H. Violette. “Take Them in Families: The Enslaved People of Casa Bianca Plantation, Florida.” Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation 1, no. 2 (2020).).
Keri Matthews, Collections Manager
Keri holds an MA in Art and Architectural History from the University of Virginia and a certificate in Editing from the University of Chicago’s Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies. She has worked at the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society since 2008.
