Biography

Kathryn Patterson is a second-year Ph.D. student in the History department at UVA. She works at the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History as a researcher for the Letters Home project, and is currently serving as co-chair for the Graduate Student Committee of the Organization of American Historians. Kathryn is also a project coordinator for the committee’s emerging writing group.

Before attending UVA, Kathryn received her B.S. from Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, where she studied History and Government. While writing about women’s activism in 1970s Florida, Kathryn enjoyed her time as a park ranger and naturalist at Reed Bingham State Park, where she led education, conservation, and recreation programs, and cared for captive wildlife.

She then relocated to Tallahassee, Florida, and began work as an Interpretive Specialist for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. There, she contributed historical and cultural research to project development across all 175 of Florida's State Parks. Her most extensive work included a permanent exhibit documenting the Seminole Tribe of Florida's history and culture at Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, interpretive scene planning, panel copy, and guiding principles for the visitor's center at Civil War-era fort and National Historic Landmark, Fort Taylor, and interpretive scene planning and panel copy for Fort Mose Historic State Park’s fort reconstruction project.

Kathryn attended Florida State University and received her M.A. in History, with a concentration in Public History. During her time there, she contributed to various pop-up exhibitions and curatorial projects that focused on the establishment of FSU’s Black Studies program and the history of enslavement and forced labor at the university. Kathryn also worked as a research assistant for the History Department’s digital archive, “A Community History of Race Relations: Tallassee and Florida State University.”