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SPOHP Staff

Dr. Matthew Jacobs, Acting Director

Associate Professor Matthew Jacobs received his Ph.D. in 2002 in U.S. History with a specialty in Foreign Relations from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his M.A. in 1996 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his B.A. in 1993 from Cornell University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on twentieth century U.S. foreign relations, particularly with the Middle East, and international and world history more broadly. He has received the Department of History’s John K. Mahon Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2004-2005) and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year Award (2009-2010).

Professor Jacobs’ first book, entitled Imagining the Middle East: The Building of An American Foreign Policy, 1918-1967, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in summer 2011. An Arabic language edition (Sutour Publications) and an English language edition (American University of Cairo Press) were released simultaneously in the Middle East. The book examines the ways in which an informal network of specialists in academia, business, the government and the media interpreted the Middle East and the United States’ role there through the middle half of the twentieth century. He published an early version of a portion of this work that focused on interpretations of Islam in Diplomatic History (September 2006).

Professor Jacobs has begun work on two new projects. The first, tentatively titled Islam and US, investigates official and unofficial U.S. responses to the rise of political Islam as a global phenomenon since 1960. Thus, the work will deal with U.S. involvement in Africa and Asia as well as the Middle East. The second project uses sports as a vehicle to examine critical issues in post-1945 international history (i.e., colonialism/post-colonialism, the international economy, sports as an arena for the prevention and/or extension of international conflict, etc.).

Professor Jacobs is director of the Bob Graham Center for Public Service.


Dr. Paul Ortiz, Program Director

Dr. Ortiz is on research leave through the Spring 2024 semester

Dr. Paul Ortíz in front of tree leavesDr. Paul Ortiz is a PEN award-winning author and historian. He served as a consultant and featured narrator for the PBS series from Henry Louis Gates, Jr. titled: The Black Church: This is Our Story, This is Our Song. He is director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and professor of history at the University of Florida.

Professor Ortiz has been the director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program since the fall semester, 2008. Under his leadership, SPOHP has received several national academic awards. He has helped to raise more than two million dollars in grants, donations, and contracts for the program. In an external review of SPOHP conducted in 2020, the Doris Duke Charitable Trust noted that, “The program’s social justice research methodologies are the focus of scholars and oral history programs across the globe.”

In the past decade, SPOHP has logistically supported hundreds of undergraduates and graduate students who have embarked on oral history field work worldwide. SPOHP-supported students have presented their research at academic conferences, community organizing workshops, and public history panels. SPOHP alumni have become public-facing professors at institutions such as UCLA, Emory University, Texas A & M, Virginia Tech, and the University of Kentucky. Undergraduate alumni have parlayed the research skills they learned at SPOHP to matriculate to elite law schools including Duke, Harvard, Howard, Florida A&M, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown, UF and many others.

Paul’s publications include Emancipation Betrayed (University of California Press), a history of the Black Freedom struggle in Florida, and Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Jim Crow South (New Press), which went into its fourth printing in 2014.

His book, An African American and Latinx History of the United States, was identified by Bustle as one of “Ten Books About Race to Read Instead of Asking a Person of Color to Explain Things to You.” Fortune Magazine listed it as one of the “10 books on American history that actually reflect the United States.” An African American and Latinx History has been featured in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the National Anti-Racist Book Festival, and the National Anti-Racist Teach-In among other venues. Since 2018, he has given invited lectures at Harvard, UC-Berkeley, Northwestern, UCLA, Duke, New York University, University of Central Florida, Powell’s Books, Busboys and Poets Books, Microsoft, Wayfair and many other venues.

His latest book is a co-edited volume with Wesley Hogan that features many of the leading scholar activists in the United States, titled: People Power: History, Organizing and Larry Goodwyn’s Democratic Vision in the Twenty-First Century.

Dr. Ortiz was president of the Oral History Association for the 2014-2015 term, exactly forty years after our program’s founder, Dr. Samuel Proctor served in the same capacity.

He is currently the president of the United Faculty of Florida-UF (NEA/AFT/FEA/AFL-CIO).

Professor Ortiz is the faculty adviser for CHISPAS, Por Colombia, and UF NextGen. He was awarded the 2013 César E. Chávez Action and Commitment Award by the Florida Education Association, AFL-CIO. The Samuel Proctor Oral History Program received the Oral History Association’s 2013 Stetson Kennedy Vox Populi Award for outstanding achievement in using oral history to create a more humane and just world. He was the recipient of the Rosa Parks Quiet Courage Award in 2014 for contributions to civil rights and social justice. Ortiz received the Resource Center for Nonviolence’s inaugural Inspirator Award in 2020 for contributions to scholarship and organizing.

Paul serves on the editorial boards for the University of North Carolina’s Latinx Histories book series;  Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies as well as for Palgrave Studies in Oral History, Palgrave Macmillan Books. In 2020-21, he was as an expert reviewer for the State of Connecticut’s new public school curriculum on Black and Latino Studies. He has been a Post-Doctoral Faculty Mentor for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation as well as for the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program

Professor Ortiz received his Ph.D. in history from Duke University in 2000.  He earned his Bachelor’s degree from the Evergreen State College in 1990 in History and Political Economy after earning his Associate of Arts Degree from Olympic Community College in 1988.

Ortiz is a third-generation military veteran. He served in the 82nd Airborne Division and 7th Special Forces Group in Central America in the mid-1980s as a radio operator and trainer on mobile teams. He is the recipient of numerous medals and citations including the US Armed Forces Humanitarian Service Medal for meritorious action in the wake of the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz stratovolcano in Tolima, Colombia in November, 1985. He received an honorable discharge the following year at the rank of Sergeant/E5.

For Dr. Ortiz’s full biography, please see Dr. Paul Ortiz – Director 2008-present


Anna Hamilton, Assistant Director

Anna Hamilton posed in front of a tree -lined streetAnna Hamilton is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work leverages oral history to better understand place-making and migration associated with the climate crisis in the American South. She joined SPOHP as assistant director in 2023. Anna collaborates with the director and SPOHP staff in this role to support and manage the program’s mission, programmatic and fieldwork projects, and day-to-day activities.

Anna holds a BA in Humanities from New College of Florida, a master’s in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi, and was a Fulbright scholar to the Republic of Mauritius. Her oral history-based master’s thesis examined the Datil pepper of St. Augustine and its potent cultural mythology connected to the region’s Minorcan population and heritage tourism; this project won the University of Mississippi’s Ann Abadie Award for Documentary Media.

Anna is an avid oral historian, having worked for more than a decade developing, consulting on, and contributing to a wide range of projects, including for New College of Florida and Sarasota County; the Southern Foodways Alliance; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; the Florida Folklife Program; and the Southern Oral History Program. She is also project director of Matanzas Voices, an ongoing oral history initiative documenting life, work, and change along northeast Florida’s Matanzas River.

She is an editor and co-founder of The Marjorie, an award-winning reporting nonprofit covering environmental and social justice issues in Florida.


Tamarra Jenkins, Administrative Specialist I

Image of Tamarra JenkinsTamarra Jenkins has been the Office Manager for the Proctor Program since 2010. In her capacity as Office Manager, she oversees all HR, fiscal and C&G matters. She has assisted with the creation and submission of numerous grants to major funding organizations, including the Florida Humanities Council, U.S. National Park Services, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She works directly under the Director of SPOHP and closely with all Proctor Program staff and students to ensure their academic and professional needs are met. The credentials for the current position she holds have been cultivated through her many years of service at UF; starting as a student assistant with the UF International Center to several years as a program assistant in the College of Engineering. Over this time she has obtained PRO3 Series certificates in HR/Payroll Management, Fiscal Management, and Business Communication.

With the accounting knowledge she possesses, Ms. Jenkins was appointed to the Oral History Associations 2015-2016 Finance Committee and collaborated with other business professionals to review current OHA practices and recommend ways they can be tailored to enhance efficiency. She is currently a participant of the University’s Employee Education Program, enrolled ¾ time at Santa Fe College, pursuing a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Business Administration Management. All of Tamarra’s free time is used to support her children’s academic and athletic endeavors.

In 2016, Ms. Jenkins won the University of Florida Superior Staff Accomplishment Award.

Tamarra manages the schedules of approximately 50 students, staff, visiting faculty in order to maximize SPOHP’s ability to serve the UF campus and broader communities. Tamarra manages SPOHP’s budget, a large number of contract invoices as well as SPOHP’s ongoing development and fundraising that sustain our ability to provide educational services to faculty, students, and staff at UF including vital experiential fieldwork opportunities. Tamarra provides guidance to graduate students, undergraduates as well as to visiting faculty, volunteers, and members of the public who rely on SPOHP to fulfill UF’s goals in teaching, service, and research.

For any matters concerning the Proctor Program, please contact Ms. Jenkins via phone at 352-392-7168 or email: tamarraj@ufl.edu.


Ms. Deborah Hendrix, Digital Humanities Production Coordinator

Image of Deborah hendrixMs. Deborah Hendrix, a native of St. Simons Island, Georgia, completed early studies in marine biology at Brunswick Jr. College, Brunswick, Georgia. While figuring out next steps, worked in clinical medical hospital laboratories. The latter part of that 20-year plan included completing a graphic design degree from Santa Fe Community College in 2000. Two years later in 2002 completed an associate of arts degree from SFCC which led to University of Florida admission in 2002 for a bachelor’s degree in history completed in 2006. Worked concurrently with the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program starting in 2000, and have been with the program ever since, becoming full time in 2014 as the technology coordinator. Today our major ongoing tasks are quality interview recording for the future, archive management, and assisting students, faculty, and the wider community in all things oral history.

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Adolfho Romero, Project Coordinator

Mr. Adolfho Romero holds a Master of Arts in Latin American Studies with a specialization in Latinx Studies, Migration, and Transnational Studies. He is currently applying for acceptance into a Ph.D. program in Political Science. He is affiliated with the Center for Latin American Studies at UF, and the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program. Adolfho has created managerial procedures and protocols, overseen the volunteer program and fieldwork research opportunities such as the Mississippi Freedom Project, assisted with project grants such as the Reanimating African American Histories of the Gulf South and the Doris Duke Revitalizing Oral Histories project, and collaborated with UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Initiative to bring awareness to Latinx identity and social injustices in Florida, and in the creation of Looking Ahead, The Politics of Florida and the 2022 Midterm Elections. Furthermore, Adolfho has co-taught an internship course titled Higher Equity in Education and a variety of oral history workshops. In addition to his Master’s Thesis titled ¡Si Se Puede! Yes, We Can! An Analysis of a Non-profit Organization and its Effectiveness; The Farmworkers Association of Florida,” Adolfho has published op-eds with the Gainesville Iguana and Gainesville Sun and has created and moderated the Gainesville Latino Film Festival themed Traditions, Healing and Survival. Finally, Adolfho currently serves as Treasurer for the Alachua County Labor Coalition and has previously served as chair for the Alachua County Tenants Association in 2021, Treasurer for the Caribbean, Latinx, and Latin American Exchange Organization in 2020, and was a recognized member of the National Spanish Honors Society Sigma Delta Pi in 2018.

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Donovan Carter, Research Assistant

Mr. Donovan Carter recently received his master’s in Latin American Studies from UF. His research interests include racial state violence, policing, transnational political movements, Black social and political movements. He is affiliated with the Center for American Studies and the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program. Donovan currently serves on SPOHP’s Leadership committee and is assisting with a variety of projects at the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program including, the Latinx Diaspora in the Americas Project, and the Oak Hammock Project. In addition to these assignments, Donovan has presented SPOHP related initiatives for a variety of UF units.

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Mosunmola Ogunmolaji, Graduate Assistant

Mosunmola Ogunmolaji is a dedicated Ph.D. student pursuing her doctoral degree in History at the University of Florida. Her research interests include African History, History of Medicine, and Gender Studies. Mosunmola’s research focuses on the lived experiences of West African migrant nurses in host communities. Her work involves extensive fieldwork (collecting oral histories), where she collaborates with local communities and other stakeholders. She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in History and Strategic Studies from the University of Lagos, Nigeria.

At SPOHP, Mosunmola was the project coordinator of the Oak Hammock Oral History Project. Currently, she is working on the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funded project Reanimating African American Oral Histories of the Gulf South, and other oral history projects.


Agnieszka (Aga) Ilwicka-Karuna, Graduate Assistant

Agnieszka (Aga) Ilwicka-Karuna is a PhD candidate in Jewish Studies at the University of Florida in the Department of History. Her work primarily focuses on postwar migration, languages, women and children’s history, memory and politics, and oral history. Aga graduated from the Jewish Studies program at the University of Southampton with a Master of Research degree. She holds an MA and BA in Humanities from the University of Wrocław. In 2012-2013 she was awarded a one year fellowship that led her to oral history. Since then she has recorded over 150 interviews in Yiddish, Polish and English among the Jewish communities in Poland, Israel and the United States. The interviews are available here: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/wexler-oral-history-project

Aga is a strong advocate for human rights, animal rights, and the rights of nature. Her main areas of interest are migration, philanthropy, and memory and the preservation of languages, with a strong focus on the Yiddish language and culture.


Diana Rodriguez-Allende, Graduate Assistant

Diana Rodriguez-Allende earned a BBA in International Business and is attending UF to pursue an MA in Latin American Studies. Coming from a bicultural background, she finds that her mixed history is extremely rich and a lot of it can become lost and/or convoluted. She hopes to explore and document her own and her community’s history through engagement and conversation.


Robert Smalls, Research Assistant

Robert Smalls is a recent UF graduate who majored in history and minored in anthropology. He wrote a thesis on the legal and political mistreatment of Black people in the American South post-slavery and its parallels with conservative German political theory. But his research interests also include Gullah/Geechee culture and the African diaspora worldwide while exploring nazism, fascism, ultra-nationalism, and apartheid.

Robert’s work at SPOHP primarily focuses on the Network to Freedom Underground Railroad Oral History Project. He formerly assisted with the Challenging Racism at the University of Florida podcast through music production, audio editing, and audio mastering. Robert was first introduced to the SPOHP by attending Dr. Ortiz’s office hours. While working on his thesis, Robert fell in love with SPOHP and began to work there. Now, Robert is focusing on a research paper, which expands on his thesis and focuses on the white supremacy campaigns in North Carolina and Florida.


For additional information, contact SPOHP, call the offices at (352) 392-7168, and connect with us online today.