Alexandra M. Macdonald named the 2021-2022 Swan Foundation Short-Term Resident Research Fellowship for Revolutionary-Era Material Culture

“The American Philosophical Society’s Library & Museum is excited to announce that Alexandra M. Macdonald, a Ph.D. candidate in History at the College of William & Mary, has received the Swan Foundation Short-Term Resident Research Fellowship for Revolutionary-Era Material Culture. This fellowship provides one month of support for researchers to work in the artifact collections of the Swan Historical Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and other repositories in the Greater Philadelphia Region.”

14 Graduate Students Earn Research Grants

“As pandemic restrictions begin to lift, graduate degree candidates are hoping to continue their research at museums, historic houses, and archives around the globe. The Decorative Arts Trust is pleased to announce the following 14 beneficiaries of our 2021 research grant program. 

Alexandra M. Macdonald, PhD candidate in History at William & Mary, will investigate the conceptions of time in the 18th century by studying embroideries, ceramics, metal goods, and other non-mechanical timekeepers.”

At the GRS Symposium: When in Boston, stop into Mr. Abbot’s

“Before Amazon, even before Filene’s, Bostonians were served by Samuel Abbot’s shop on the corner of Wing’s Lane. Alexandra Macdonald has been looking into the 18^th-century “theatre of consumption” that was Abbot’s shop, as well as his customers and the retail culture of colonial America, where even the residents of Puritan Boston were interested in consumption. She drew on copious correspondence and mercantile accounts and she even was able to run Abbot’s desk to earth…”