Losing the Forest for the Seas: Ship afterlives and urban maritime landscapes in Northern Virginia
Chelsea is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and a museum educator. She joined the department after graduating with a BA in Anthropology from DePaul University and an MS in Maritime Archaeology and Conservation from Texas A&M. Her dissertation research focuses on the relationship between British maritime culture, agroforestry, and the development of port cities in the 18th-century Chesapeake. Trained as both a historical and maritime archaeologist, she combines terrestrial and underwater methods to connect the land and sea.
Beyond her dissertation, she works as an archaeobotanist to explore the lifeways of enslaved individuals in the South Carolina Lowcountry. She also works broadly with the archaeology of colonialism in the Atlantic world and has excavated multiple American Revolutionary War sites. Her practice prioritizes public history and foregrounds community voices, both in her archaeology and her work with the Penn Museum.
For more information about Chelsea Cohen, read her Fellow Profile.