Leadership

Director, Shaun Illingworth, MLIS

Throughout his twenty-one years with ROHA, Mr. Illingworth has fostered a dramatic expansion of the program's scope and reach. Trained in oral history and library and information science at Rutgers University, Mr. Illingworth has been instrumental in developing all aspects of the program, including interviewing techniques, website engineering, undergraduate education and community outreach. As webmaster for the #15 oral history website in the world, he has developed an online repository featuring over a thousand oral histories and tens of thousands of pages of fully transcribed, text-searchable material that cover a variety of topics, including social, cultural, legal, educational, immigration and military history, as well as the histories of Rutgers University and the State of New Jersey. He earned a B.A. in History at Rutgers College and a MLIS at the Rutgers School of Communications and Information.

Assistant Director, Kathryn Rizzi

Assistant director Kathryn “Kate” Rizzi is an editor, writer, teacher and oral historian.  Her time at the Rutgers Oral History Archives (ROHA) dates back to 2000, when she worked as a Public History Intern for then director Sandra Stewart Holyoak.  As a Henry Rutgers Scholar under the direction of Professor John Whiteclay Chambers II, Kate studied the use of technology in the Marine Corps’ implementation of amphibious warfare in the Pacific during World War II.  With analysis drawing upon the oral history and war letters of her grandfather, Marine Colonel Charles S. Tracy, and archival research conducted at the Washington Navy Yard and Marine Corps Historical Center at Quantico, Virginia, her Henry Rutgers Thesis entitled “A Marine at War” won second place in the Harold L. Poor Memorial Prize in history.  Kate graduated from Rutgers College in 2002, earning highest honors and membership in Phi Beta Kappa.  While teaching high school social studies in North Plainfield, she earned a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership at the College of Saint Elizabeth.  In 2010, Kate returned to ROHA, working as an editor until becoming the assistant director in 2018.  As assistant director, Kate endeavors to continue ROHA’s mission of documenting the oral histories of individuals in Rutgers and New Jersey communities. 

Rutgers Oral History Archives
1 Spring Street, Room 417
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
848-932-0454 (office)
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