Amalia S. Levi, an archivist and cultural heritage professional, is Executive Director responsible for Programs, and the founder of HeritEdge. She holds a PhD in Dependency and Slavery Studies; a dual master’s degree in Library Science (MLS – concentration in Archives) and History; and a master’s in Museum Studies. Originally from Greece, she has worked in Turkey, the US, and Barbados. Her work centers on the alignment of people, programs, and resources to maximize engagement with cultural heritage collections and make the past accessible, exciting, and relevant to diverse audiences. She now resides in Barbados and has collaborated extensively with stakeholders in the Caribbean to enhance the accessibility to and preservation of cultural heritage.
As a practicing archivist, she has completed archival processing and digitization projects in the Caribbean with a special focus on colonial archives and Jewish collections. Through grants from the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme and UCLA’s Modern Endangered Archives Program, she has led digitization projects with archival collections in partnership with the Barbados Archives. Before that she completed the archival processing and digitization of the records of the Synagogue Restoration Project in Bridgetown, Barbados. She has worked in museums, developing exhibits, and conducting archival research, and was the founding curator of the Jewish Museum of Turkey in Istanbul.
Having lived in wildly different milieus and worked with diverse individuals, she has developed a profound understanding of cultural differences and a sensitivity to and respect for regional norms and expectations. This, coupled with her varied background, enable her to bring to our team both the ability to recognize projects and her enthusiasm in bringing people together. She does so with an eye to the global without sacrificing the local.
In her research, Amalia is interested in augmenting historical scholarship on diasporas and underrepresented populations through linking and enriching dispersed collections. She has published extensively on issues of colonial archives, ‘archival silences’, and knowledge construction.
Amalia’s PhD is from the Bonn Center for Slavery and Dependency Studies at the University of Bonn; her Master’s degree in Library Sciences (MLS) with a concentration in archives and an M.A. in History, with a focus on Jewish Studies, are both from the University of Maryland; her M.A. in Museum Studies is from Yildiz University in Istanbul, Turkey; and her B.A. in Archaeology and History of Art is from the University of Athens, Greece.
For a list of publications and presentations, see here. You can also find her on Bluesky.