Katie DeFonzo
Archivist
“A lifelong lover of the primary source documents that bring history to life, I am grateful to be part of a team that works to preserve these resources so that we can dig deeper into our past.”
Work at HAI
At HAI, Katie is an archivist based in Washington, D.C. She has worked on digitizing materials from selected collections belonging to the Army Corps of Engineers so that those resources might be made more widely accessible for researchers and the public. She loves nothing more than finding unexpected connections between the materials she is working with and the various time periods she has studied: we can learn so much by viewing important historical moments through the eyes of someone new.
Path to HAI
Katie joined HAI in November 2021 after completing The Catholic University of America’s joint Masters Degree Program in American History and Library Science. During her time in graduate school, Katie served as Graduate Library Preprofessional (GLP) in the Semitics/ICOR Library on campus, where her work focused largely on the digitization of rare materials (including Near Eastern manuscripts) from the collection and research related to the early history of DC’s Brookland neighborhood.
She previously served as an intern at Allaire Historic Village; The National Museum of American History; and the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Conducting reference services and serving as a historical interpreter have allowed her to share the knowledge gained through these experiences with others. Katie holds a B.A. in History and Spanish Literature from Fordham University and is a graduate of the Rose Hill Honors Program. Her research interests include (but are by no means limited to) Spanish colonialism and Spanish-American relations during the Early Republic