Sady Sullivan

Sady Sullivan is an oral historian with over a decade of experience building community-engaging oral history projects, revitalizing interest in legacy oral history collections, and establishing digital strategies for oral history as an outreach tool for libraries, archives, museums, and movement building. She was Curator for the Columbia Center for Oral History Archives at Columbia University, 2014-2016; and Director of Oral History at Brooklyn Historical Society, 2006 – 2014. Sady revitalized a dormant oral history program at Brooklyn Historical Society, promoting access to ground-breaking collections created in the 1970s and 1980s. Also at Brooklyn Historical Society, Sady created Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations, an award-winning oral history project, racial justice dialogue series, and digital humanities site exploring mixed-heritage identity. Sady writes about this nonhierarchical and collaborative project in “Public Homeplaces: Collaboration and Care in Oral History Project Design,” a chapter in the collectionBeyond Women’s Words: Feminisms and the Practices of Oral History in the Twenty-First Century(Routledge 2018) edited by Katrina Srigley, Stacey Zembrzycki, and Franca Iacovetta. In addition, Sady is an active member of the Oral History Association and served on Groundswell’s founding Core Working Group, 2011-2013. Her work is influenced by the Buddhist practice of deep listening, and formative experiences at three feminist institutions: The Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies, Babeland, and Wellesley Centers for Women.