Angela Labrador

At Johns Hopkins, Angela Labrador is an associate program director and a senior lecturer for the MA in Cultural Heritage Management and MA in Museum Studies programs.

An anthropologist with expertise in archaeology and IT, Labrador’s research focuses 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. She also specializes in managing legacy ethnographic and archaeological collections, contributing to repatriation processes under NAGPRA. Her interdisciplinary research spans the intersections of law, Indigenous sovereignty, and preservation and includes co-editing the legislation section of the Global Encyclopedia of Archaeology.

As a co-founding partner of Coherit Associates, Labrador has led capacity-building projects across the U.S. and the Caribbean, contributing to model legislation, inventory frameworks, sustainability standards, and professional development opportunities that emphasize emic approaches to heritage management. As part of her work with Coherit, she has implemented and customized Arches, an open-source geo-spatial platform for managing built heritage inventory data. She is an active member of the Arches Project’s global community and serves on the Getty Conservation Institute’s Community Advisory Committee.

Labrador has served as a consultant to UNESCO, contributing to the Dive into Heritage digital storytelling initiative and helping to build the online Clearinghouse on Living Heritage and Education. She also co-directed an NEH-funded Landmarks of American History and Culture grant that trained K-12 teachers in place-based education using local heritage sites.

Labrador serves as co-chair of the Society for American Archaeology’s Public Education Committee and is an expert member of the ICOMOS International Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage. A past-president of the Vermont Archaeological Society, Labrador also sits on the Leadership Team for Project Archaeology and serves on the boards of the Institute for Heritage Education and the Quarrymen Park nonprofit.

She holds a BA 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

• “Creating an Intentional Strategy,” chapter co-author in A Practitioner’s Guide to Public Archaeology: Intentional Programming for Effective Outreach, 2024.
• “Integrating ICH and Education,” literature review author, the International Journal of Intangible Heritage, 2022
• The Oxford Handbook of Public Heritage Method and Theory, co-editor, Oxford University Press, 2018