Education

B.S. Engineering, Swarthmore College
B.A. History, Swarthmore College
Ph.D. History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, Johns Hopkins University

Bio

Professor Marsh combines her interests in engineering, history, and museum objects to tell stories of technology through historical artifacts. She likes to think of history as a Trojan horse to learning about tech. Her main research interests revolve around how the general public comes to understand complex engineering ideas, especially outside the classroom—through museums, documentaries, TV shows, and so on.

During the 2024-25 academic year, Dr. Marsh will be the NEH Fellow in residence at the Linda Hall Library for Science, Engineering, and Technology in Kansas City, MO. Her research project involves combing through the former library of the United Engineering Society and the publications of the IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers), and its predecessor organizations, the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers) and AIEE (American Institute of Electrical Engineers), to create a database of women who contributed to these professional societies. This is a passion project for Dr. Marsh (who has been an IEEE member since her undergrad days) because while all the other major engineering disciplines have approached gender parity, electrical engineers remain stubbornly at 12% female. In advance of the upcoming 150th anniversary of the organization, she would like to create a digital visualization and an accompanying book to shine a light on the women who have always been there, yet who are rarely recognized. 

Professor Marsh is the Co-Director of the Ann Johnson Institute for Science, Technology & Society , a center on campus promoting interdisciplinary collaboration among humanists, scientists, engineers, and medical professionals. Before coming to USC, she was Curator and Winton M. Blount Research Chair at the Smithsonian Institution National Postal Museum. 

Specialization

Public History (museums), History of Technology (women in engineering)

Activities

Dr. Marsh writes the “ Past Forward ” column for  Spectrum,  the flagship publication of the IEEE. Each month she chooses a museum object in the history of computer and electrical engineering and spins out an engaging tale. Her subjects have ranged from  Benjamin Franklin’s  experiment with tenderizing turkey to  CIA spy technology  to the history of the  hot comb . She is also in the process of piloting a YouTube series for Spectrum . The first episode is how E. O. Lawrence – Oppenheimer’s BFF (and then not) – took time off after winning the Nobel Prize and working on the Manhattan Project to dabble in inventing color TV.

As the consultant for the hit YouTube series,  Crash Course: History of Science , her work has reached more than 22 million viewers. She organized the series around her HIST 108 syllabus and now uses them in her online version of this course. In doing so, she studied content retention from videos versus the traditional textbook, which she published with her teaching assistant Bethany Johnson as a special Focus section on pedagogy with  Isis ,  the journal of the History of Science Society, in December 2020.

Perhaps her most memorable teaching experience was over Spring Break in 2015 when Dr. Marsh took a group of a dozen USC graduate students to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to conduct over 50 oral histories with base residents. A student-designed exhibit based on this work was shown at McKissick Museum. The trip also resulted in a consulting gig on an Oliver Stone drama, but she suspects her “facts” might get in the way of the story line.