Wallace Center Named Mellon Community Fellowship Site

We are proud to share that Laura King has been awarded a Mellon Community Fellowship through Troy University, part of a multi-year initiative supported by the Mellon Foundation to reframe Alabama’s cultural memory by centering underrepresented histories and lived experiences. The Wallace Center has been selected as Laura’s fellowship site, positioning our work within a statewide collaborative effort that bridges academic research with community knowledge. Through digital archiving, public humanities programming, and community-engaged cultural documentation, the fellowship strengthens the Wallace Center’s mission to preserve and interpret local histories with care, rigor, and accessibility, expanding how stories connected to Wallace land are researched, shared, and understood.

Laura brings exceptional qualifications to this role, including a PhD in public history from Auburn University and a master’s degree in history from University of Alabama at Birmingham. She has extensive experience in Alabama’s history and humanities landscape and has already played a meaningful role in helping the Wallace Center develop interpretive guidelines that ensure accurate, respectful portrayals of the people who lived and labored on Wallace land. Her fellowship work will deepen this foundation, strengthening community-centered storytelling and reinforcing the Center’s commitment to thoughtful, inclusive historical interpretation.

Cheers, Laura!