Dr. Elissa Sampson is an urban geographer who studies how the past is actively used to create new spaces of migration, memory, heritage, and activism. She has pursued a life-long interest in migration, diaspora, re-diasporization, and immigrant culture on New York’s Lower East Side, Brooklyn and Paris, making visible dynamic interactions among diasporas in shared spaces/places. As a Research Associate in Cornell University’s Jewish Studies Program, Dr. Sampson worked extensively with Cornell’s Kheel Center confiscated Cold War archives on the International Workers Order (IWO), including their partial digitization. She co-organized a public, online academic conference, “Di Linke” (the Left), based largely on its archival Jewish Section holdings. Dr. Sampson has taught labor and gender history, including the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, its memorialization, and relationship to current labor activism. She is the co-editor and contributor to a new book about the IWO.
