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Graduate Student Directory

Title
- PhD Candidate
- Director of the Watsonville is in the Heart Digital Archive
Division Humanities Division
Department
- History Department
- History of Art/Visual Culture
Email
- msimonre@ucsc.edu
Office Location
- Remote work location, N/A
Mail Stop History Department

Education

M.A. History, University of California, Santa Cruz

B.A., History summa cum laude, University of California, Irvine

Current Public History Projects

Director of digital archiving and educational programs, January 2020- present

President's Dissertation Year Fellowship. 2024-2025
Center for Archival Research and Training Fellowship, 2023-2024
UCSC History Department Summer Dissertation Grant, 2023
UCSC History Department Summer Dissertation Fellowship, 2022
The Humanities Institute Summer Dissertation Fellowship, 2022
The Humanities Insititute Public Fellowship 2021-2022
Social Science Research Council's Dissertation Proposal Development Program (SSRC-DPD) 2020
The Humanities Institute Summer Research Fellowship 2020
CITL Graduate Pedagogy Fellowship 2020
National Humanities Center GSSR Fellow 2020
Regent's Fellowship 2018-2019

Ayson Plank, Christina, Meleia Simon-Reynolds, Olivia Sawi, Dr. Kathleen Cruz Gutierrez, and Dr. Steve McKay, “Building A Community Archive: Preserving and Uplifting Stories of Filipino Labor and Migration,” FANHS Journal 11, (2023): 161-170.
Ayson Plank, Christina and Meleia Simon-Reynolds, "Watsonville is in the Heart: Documenting Histories of Transpacific Filipinx Migration in the Pajaro Valley," Pacific Arts Journal 22, no. 1 (2022): 250-261.

“Connecting Humanities Undergraduates with Community Projects and Future Careers,” National Humanities Conference, November 11, 2022.
“Watsonville is in the Heart: Reflections on Community-engaged Oral History, Archiving, and Exhibition Curation,” All-In Conference, October 27, 2022.
“Navigating Silences and Things Left Unsaid: Watsonville is in the Heart, a Community Oral History Case Study” Oral History Association Annual Conference, October 22, 2022.
“Building A Community Archive: Preserving and Uplifting Stories of Filipino Labor and Migration,” Filipino American National Historical Society Conference, August 13, 2022.
“Impassioned Online Teaching: Empathy, Embodiment, and Radical Pedagogy,” The Humanities Institute PhD+ Series, November 3, 2020.
“Transpacific Images: Photographic Representations of Filipinx Migrants in California and Hawai‘i,” UCSC Graduate Research Symposium, April 20, 2021.

Sowing Seeds: Filipino American Stories from the Pajaro Valley, April 2024 - August 20204, Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History

Instructor of Record Experience

UCSC Teaching Assistant Experience