Your Clem History Writing Center Consultants
The consultants for the 2024-2025 Academic Year are Sarah Donovan, Tamia Haygood, Jen Motter and Elliot Warren
We are advanced Ph.D. Candidates in the William & Mary History Department. We are very familiar with history research and writing and are prepared to help you with any type of history writing assignment. We look forward to meeting you!
We look forward to meeting you! Learn more about us below:
Sarah Donovan
Sarah Donovan received her B.A. in History from Lycoming College in 2017, an M.A. in History from SUNY Brockport in 2019, and an M.A. in History from William & Mary in 2020. Her dissertation entitled “Transplanted Whiteboys and Sons of Paxton: Patterns of Extralegal Violence in the British Atlantic World,” explores the transatlantic connections between violent groups of “boys” both along the Early American frontier and in Early Modern Ireland throughout the second half of the eighteenth century. Sarah’s research has been generously supported by the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, the Huntington Library, the David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society, and the Pennsylvania State Archives with the Pennsylvania Historical Association.
As a Fall 2022 Teaching Fellow, Sarah taught a course entitled “Mobs, Rioters, and Violence in the Early Modern World,” during which she created a role-playing game called “Re-Drawing the Proclamation Line of 1763” that allowed students to engage with primary sources and historiographical arguments in new ways. Sarah is passionate about public history and served as a historical interpreter at the Genesee Country Village and Museum in Mumford, NY and as the 2019-2020 digital apprentice for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture in support of the Georgian Papers Programme. She also provided foundational research for the Pittsburgh, Virginia, exhibit at the Fort Pitt Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. Sarah currently serves as a Graduate Writing Consultant at William & Mary’s Graduate Writing Resources Center.
Fun Fact: Loves to crochet and play with her dog, Doolin.
Sarah believes that topic sentences and transitional sentences are simultaneously the best and worst part about writing. She also loves a good semicolon.
Tamia Haygood
Fun Fact: Enjoys watching horror movies.
Tamia believes that the most important part of the writing process is setting up her workspace.
Jen Motter
Jennifer received her BA from the University of Pittsburgh where her undergraduate thesis used the papers of Jeremias and Maria van Rensselaer to examine the interplay of authority and gender in Dutch New Netherland on the eve of the English takeover in 1664. Following graduation, she studied the Dutch language at Leiden University and went on to get her Master’s degree in History from William & Mary in 2020. Her research portfolio explored the role of knowledge in the commodification of salt from the Dutch ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao) and questioned the nature of the broader Dutch Atlantic empire.
Jennifer is currently a fourth-year PhD candidate in the History Department at William & Mary. Her dissertation, tentatively titled “Knowledge and Commodification in the Early Modern Dutch Atlantic,” examines how individuals working with the West-Indische Compagnie (WIC) used environmental, tacit, and mercantile knowledge in the commodification of natural resources in the Dutch ABC islands and New Netherland. Her research uses a History of Knowledge approach to investigate how WIC directors, councilmen, employees, and enslaved laborers acquired knowledge, put various forms of expertise to use for commercial purposes, and distributed the information required for these practices.
Fun Fact: Prefers Wawa over Sheetz.
Jen's favorite part of the writing process is coming up with a clever title.
Elliot Warren
Elliot came to William & Mary in 2019 after receiving his BA in history and political science from the George Washington University in 2018. Since coming to William & Mary, he received his MA in 2020 and has taught a course on capitalism and the Age of Revolutions. He also has taught for the NIAHD pre-college program course on the Road to the American Revolution.
Elliot studies the connection between the rise of capitalism and revolution at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. He is currently working on his dissertation, which looks at the impact of the French Revolution on local political economies in the Early American Republic.
Fun Fact: Likes playing historical video games and Dungeons & Dragons.
Elliot's favorite part of the writing process is organizing his notes into the structure of a paper.
