Meet the Staff
Here are the staff members assigned to the HST and ANP classes this semester.
![](http://leadr.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Gillian_0447.jpeg)
Gillian Macdonald
Interim Director
![](http://leadr.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/93.png)
Scott Bullock
History PhD Candidate
![](http://leadr.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/this.jpg)
Jarad Cornett
Anthropology PhD Candidate
![](http://leadr.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Knaak_ProfilePicture_072024-1.jpeg)
Marissa Knaak
History PhD Student
![](http://leadr.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/BrideGroom-GabrielleJustin-32-scaled.jpg)
Gabrielle Moran-O’Dell
Anthropology PhD Student
LEADR Staff:
![](http://leadr.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screenshot-2024-04-01-at-10.21.41.png)
Gillian Macdonald, Interim Director
Macdonald is the Interim Director of the Lab for the Education and Advancement in Digital Research. She is also an Assistant Professor (Fixed-Term) in the Department of History at Michigan State University. She is a member of the core faculty for both CERES and DH@MSU and holds a PhD in Transnational and Comparative History.
![](https://leadr.studio/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/watrall.jpg)
Ethan Watrall, Anthropology Liasion
Watrall is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University. He is Director of the Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative, Director of the Digital Heritage Innovation Lab, and Curator of Archaeology at the Michigan State University Museum.
Graduate Student Bios:
![](http://leadr.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Leadr1-scaled.jpg)
Scott Bullock (he/him) is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History. He studies twentieth century legal regulation of immigration from the Asia Pacific to the United States shaped understandings of citizenship, family, and the nation. He is also interested in how that immigration informed state practices of legal regulation and administration. Currently, he is examining the establishment of federal laws regulating spousal and intended spousal immigration of U.S. military personnel after WWII.
![](http://leadr.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Bone-Print-scaled.jpg)
Jarad Cornett (he/him) is a third year PhD student in the Department of Anthropology. Jarad’s work centers on Southeast Asia and explores issues relating to identity, conflict, and migration. His current work looks at Indonesia’s transmigration program and the relationship between space and identity.
![](http://leadr.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/DSC_0007-scaled-1.jpg)
Marissa Knaak (she/her) is a PhD candidate in History studying modern Europe, focusing on women’s and gender history. Her dissertation is a comparative study of department and fashion stores titled “In the Shadows of Window Displays: The industrialization of Fashion Retailing in Sheffield & Cologne, 1890-1914.”
![](http://leadr.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/DSC_0014-scaled-1.jpg)
Gabrielle Moran-O’Dell (she/her) is a second year doctoral student with a focus in archaeology and is a Campus Archaeology Program Fellow. Gabrielle’s work looks at the archaeology of a Late Woodland to Late Archaic site in Michigan, working closely with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. She specializes in using geophysical instruments such as Ground Penetrating Radar, Magnetometry, Electrical Resistivity, and others.
Undergraduate Lab Assistants (Fall 2024)
Morgan Fox, Data Visualization
Max Levanduski, Anthropology
Alumni and Former Staff
Directors:
A.L. McMichael (Director from 2019-2023)
Brandon Locke (Director from 2014-2019)
Graduate Assistants/Staff:
Kevin Cabrera, Graduate Assistant (2024)
Devashish Saurav, Graduate Assistant (2024)
Jada Gannaway, Graduate Assistant (2024)
Ashley Cerku, Graduate Assistant (2023-2024)
Aubree Marshall, Graduate Assistant (2023-2024)
Dani Willcutt, Graduate Assistant (2023-2024)
Daniel Fandino, Graduate Assistant (2017-2023)
Brian Geyer, Graduate Assistant (2014-2019, Spring 2023)
Chiadikaobi Gregory Okafor, Graduate Assistant (Spring 2023)
Heather Brothers, Lab Staff (Fall 2022)
Jennifer Andrella, Graduate Assistant (2017-2019, 2022)
Zachary Francis-Hapner, Graduate Assistant (2019-2022)
Marcela Omans McKeeby, Graduate Assistant (Fall 2022)
Dani Willcutt, Graduate Assistant (Summer 2020)
Grant Gliniecki, Graduate Assistant (2019-2020)
Jack Biggs, Graduate Assistant (2018-2019)
Alyssa Lopez, Graduate Assistant (2016-2017, 2018-2019)
Dawson McCall, Graduate Assistant (2016-2017, 2019)
Autumn Painter, Graduate Assistant (2016-2018)
Sara Bijani, Graduate Assistant (2015-2017)
Joey Bradshaw, Graduate Assistant (2016)
Jorge Felipe Gonzalez, Graduate Assistant (2015-2016)