Angela Labrador

At Johns Hopkins, Angela Labrador is an Assistant Program Director and a senior lecturer for the MA in Cultural Heritage Management and MA in Museum Studies programs.

As an anthropologist and educator with a background in archaeology and IT, Labrador has focused her research on the policies, ethics, and social relations that promote the safeguarding of living heritage and working landscapes. She uses participatory action research methods to engage with heritage at local levels and has helped develop digital heritage inventory systems used by governments and NGOs around the world.

A co-founding partner of Coherit Associates, Labrador has worked on capacity-building projects in the U.S. and the Caribbean. She has contributed to new model legislation, inventory frameworks, sustainability standards, and professional development opportunities that promote emic approaches to heritage ethics and holistic understandings of accessibility. Such approaches can also be found in her co-edited volume, The Oxford Handbook of Public Heritage Method and Theory (2018).

Labrador has worked as a consultant to UNESCO, helping to develop their online Clearinghouse on Living Heritage and Education, and has published a literature review on “Integrating ICH and Education” in the International Journal of Intangible Heritage. She has applied her research to developing teacher training opportunities, recently co-directing an NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture grant to train K-12 teachers in place-based education using local heritage sites. She has researched and taught on the intersections between U.S. law, heritage, and Indigenous sovereignty and is co-editor of the legislation section of the Global Encyclopedia of Archaeology. She has worked as a collections manager of ethnographic and archaeological collections and has contributed to completing inventories and consulting with Tribes on repatriations under NAGPRA.

Labrador serves as co-chair of the Society for American Archaeology’s Public Education Committee, is an expert member of the ICOMOS International Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage, and is president of the Vermont Archaeological Society.

She holds a Bachelor of Art in art history and critical theory from Simon’s Rock College of Bard and a PhD in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Featured Works

• The Oxford Handbook of Public Heritage Method and Theory, co-editor, Oxford University Press, 2018
• “Integrating ICH and Education,” literature review author, the International Journal of Intangible Heritage
• Global Encyclopedia of Archaeology, co-editor of the legislation section