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Emily Sneff

Ph.D. Student (ABD)

Advisor: Karin Wulf
email: [[ejsneff]]
Current Research: Early America, Book History
website: emilysneff.com

Bio
Emily Sneff is a Ph.D. Candidate and a Cincinnati Barra Dissertation Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies for 2022-23. Her dissertation, "When Independence was Declared," examines the dissemination of the Declaration of Independence around the Atlantic world in 1776. Before graduate school, Emily was the Research Manager of the Declaration Resources Project at Harvard University, and was responsible for research and resource development. In collaboration with Danielle Allen, Emily conducted research on the Sussex Declaration, the second known contemporary manuscript copy of the Declaration of Independence on parchment. Emily's interest in the Declaration of Independence began at the American Philosophical Society, where she was a member of the museum's curatorial team for a series of exhibitions on Thomas Jefferson. Emily graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2011 with a B.A. in History and a minor in Museums and Society. Her honors thesis, "Furnishing Sloan's Nicknackatory: The Many Founders of the British Museum," and her fellowship at the Walters Art Museum during her final semester at Hopkins profoundly influenced her interest in material culture and digital humanities. She received her M.A. in history from William & Mary in 2019. In her first year at William & Mary, Emily was the Omohundro Institute digital apprentice for Ben Franklin's World, a podcast about early American history. In the fall of 2021, she taught a HIST211 course on Early American News. Emily's graduate work has been supported by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Omohundro Institute, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, and the William & Mary Graduate Studies Advisory Board.