About Me
Dr. Maura Doherty
Historian, Educator, Consultant
I have a Ph.D. in History from New York University, with a focus on business, economic, and labor history.
I have some 20 years experience teaching at colleges/universities in the United States, Switzerland, and online, but have also taught at all levels from kindergarten to adults.
I have taught in multiple disciplines from history, to business communications, to women's studies, to urban studies, to social science methodologies, to academic writing.
My research interest are wide ranging - my current interests are the origins of industrial capitalism and business in the United States, the textile industry, women and work, and the intersections of business, economic and social history.
I am an expert on the history of Lowell, Massachusetts and the New England textile industry.
I have experience teaching business communications, academic writing, and business English for non-native speakers.
I am an American expatriate and immigrant living abroad which has greatly impacted my view of the world, of my research, and of myself. I can speak English, German, and Swiss German, and can read Spanish, French, Italian, and Dutch.
I have some 15 years experience consulting for/with business communication firms, C.E.O.'s of global companies, and clients in need of precise, strategic, and branded communication for internal and external matters.
I consult for textbook and digital learning media as a content specialist as well as on matters of pedagogy/andragogy.
I have a Master's Degree in History from N.Y.U. and a Certificate in Women's History from the State of New York
I graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Fordham College, Rose Hill, Fordham University, with a double major in American Studies and Women's Studies
Teaching
Innovative Methods, Digital Classroom, and Virtual Pedagogy
With experience teaching students of all ages and varying abilities I have been at the forefront of implementing innovative teaching methods and mediums in both the traditional and virtual classroom.
My own experience with Dyslexia has raised my awareness to the multiple ways in which learning can be challenging.
I have taught courses with simultaneous American Sign Language Interpreters, working with them to adjust my pedagogy
I have used Democratic Learning, Student-designed Syllabi, material sources, e-Portfolios, Flip-the-Classroom, Course Webpages, Non-linear approaches, alternative assessments, mock trials, course simulations
Research and Publications
I am a Junior Scholar with a few publications to my name, currently writing two manuscripts on the history of Lowell, Massachusetts.
I have received Research Grants and Funding from the following institutions, as well as smaller travel grants to conduct research and to present at conferences:
University Research Grant, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois
Research Assistants for Faculty, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois
Bay State Historical League, Scholar-in-Residence Grant, Lowell, Massachusetts
Museum of American Textile History, Sullivan Research Fellow, Andover, Massachusetts
Massachusetts Cultural Council, Local Arts Grant
Graduate Assistantship, National Endowment for the Humanities, New York University
Graduate Teaching Fellowship, New York University
Graduate Fellowship, Historical Archives Program, New York University
The Leo Gershoy Fellowship, Department of History, New York University
"Canaries in the Coal Mine:"
The Deindustrialization of New England and the Creation of the Global Economy
My article appeared in Essays in Economic and Business History, The Journal of the Economic and Business Historical Society, Volume XVII, 1999, eds. Michael V. Namorato and Thomas Winpenny, published by the EBHS and the Department of History, The University of Mississippi, Chelsea, Michigan: BookCrafters.
My article has been cited in several books and dissertations, including scholars in Europe and in the U.S.
Among them:
Storm, Anna. Hope and Rust: Reinterpreting the Industrial Place in the Late 20th Century. Stockholm, Sweden: Stockholm Papers in the History and Philosophy of Technology, 2008.
Boehm, Lisa Krissoff and Steven H. Corey, eds. America's Urban History. New York, New York: Routledge, 2015.
Abstract:
This article discusses the process that led to the decline of New England's traditional industries and to the creation of its depressed milltowns. It argues that the decline of the New England textile and shoe industries was part of the maturation of industrial capitalism. This deindustrialization had a long-term structural impact on the local economies of many New England communities and would have implications for other industries and communities in the creation of the global economy. These depressed milltowns were the first casualties of a strategy of capital mobility that would become institutionalized in the multinational corporation and the global economy.
Some excerpts:
"By 1923, New England innovators like Lowell, Lawrence, and Fall River could barely compete with a Southern textile industry consisting of new machines, new technology new production methods, a new cheap source of migratory labor, and a newly-built infrastructure catering to the southern millowners’ needs."
"During much of this time, New England’s depressed milltowns with their structural unemployment and obsolete infrastructure were considered anomalies amid the fantastic growth and performance of the U.S. economy in the postwar era. The larger picture of the forces behind the New England textile industry’s decline and the implications it had for the future of other industries was not evident to most scholars or citizens in the 1950s and 1960s."
"Yet, in many ways the deindustrialization of New England’s textile and shoe industries were “canaries in the coal mine,” the first casualties of a capital mobility that would become institutionalized in the multi-national corporation and the global economy. The early deindustrialization of New England provides overwhelming evidence that central to an understanding of the emerging global competition for United States workers is a maturing industrial capitalism which impacted first in the textile industries and towns, and later reverberated in other industries and regions around the country and globe."
Spindle City Blues: The Impact of the Maturing Industrial Economy on the City of Lowell, Massachusetts, 1947-1978
Completed in 1998, Spindle City Blues was the first research on the deindustrialization of the New England textile industry, especially at Lowell, the state's first industrialized city.
It has been cited in many other works.
It was consulted extensively in the re-conceptualization of a permanent exhibition at the Lowell National Historical Park's award-winning Boott Cotton Mills Museum.
Abstract:
This dissertation examines the impact of the maturing textile industry on the northeastern industrial milltown of Lowell, Massachusetts in the postwar era. It examines the relationship of the postwar restructuring of the national economy to the changing local economic structure and the patterns of work, family life, and ethnic community found in the city from 1947 to 1978. It argues that the collapse of the northern textile industry was symptomatic of the course of industrial capitalism as it matured in the United States. Because local economic specialization and dependence was characteristic of American industrialization, maturation and competition frequently left pioneering textile cities like Lowell in transition and often depression as the industry ceased to predominate in the local economy. The impact on the community and its response is the focus of this study.
The long-term structural impact of this local disinvestment left the area characterized by chronic unemployment and low wages. The negative consequences of prolonged economic stagnation affected members of the community disproportionately. The stagnation of Lowell’s textile industry combined with previous patterns of corporate management and worker behavior to influence the family strategies and political economy of white, ethnic working-class culture found in the city. Economic contraction reinforced the centrality of family and of the extended kin network in Lowell. It redefined the family economy by further compelling wives, mothers, and young adults into the workforce. It also maintained ethnic consciousness and culture in the city.
This work raises important historiographical issues related to postwar economic restructuring, political economy, and the role of place, gender, and ethnicity in the emerging global economy. It sheds light on the human impact of economic specialization and corporate dislocation, the emergence of married women into a local economy, the changing nature of urban political economy, and the complexity of regional political economy amid national economic restructuring.
The Family Track: Keeping Your Faculties While You Mentor, Teach and Serve
My chapter Beware the Silence appeared in The Family Track: Keeping Your Faculties While You Mentor, Teach and Serve, Diana Hume George and Constance Coiner, eds., University of Illinois Press: Urbana, IL, 1998.
As part of my appointment in the Women's Studies Department, I published a piece on women in academia, the obstacles to balancing graduate studies, careers, and personal lives, and the lack of institutional support and mentoring.
It was well received, and my chapter was highlighted and mentioned positively in some reviews.
Beware the Silence also received attention and publicity in the Business News press. I gave some interviews and the Tampa Tribune's popular Business & Finance Magazine featured my work and interview tips.
Current Manuscript
Spin City: Founding Narratives of Lowell, Massachusetts
Summary
Looks like you'll have to wait for the book, expected publication 2025.
"Dr Mo"
I have enjoyed an eclectic career which has fed my love of learning, teaching, researching, writing, and sharing my talents and interests with others.
I have a Swiss and American family; we are all multilingual
My husband was a Producer for Swiss TV, recently retired
My daughter is attending the University of Zurich
I love technology, computers, science fiction, and the future
My Story
I was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts USA where several generations of my family worked in the cotton textile and shoe mills. My great, great grandfather, Patrick Doherty, who came from Ireland, worked in the Lawrence mills along with some of his children as young as 9 years old. My Canadian-born grandmother worked in the textile and shoe mills of Lowell and Lynn. Little did we know that her ritual sharing with me of her stories and her few, but treasured, photos would turn me into a historian, work which I consider a labor of love. My mother loved the city of Lowell where she grew up, becoming the first in her family to attend college and the first female stockbroker in Lowell and in a major Boston firm. She piqued my interest in economics, labor, and business. My father grew up on a farm, attended a one-room schoolhouse; he worked in a Lowell mill during the summer while being the first to attend college in his family. He eventually became a college professor and pioneer in computer software. He had a gift for teaching and storytelling that some say he gifted to me. Despite having a successful career in the United States, my love for adventure, for learning, and for an intelligent, compassionate man led me to immigrate to Switzerland where I have transformed my views of the world, learned several languages, and deepened my transnational and global perspective on many issues - but especially on my research of my hometown, a city of immigrants.