Barbara Spence Orsolits, PhD
Barbara Spence Orsolits attained her Bachelor’s in History from Indiana University in 1977. From 1977 to 2019, she flew for Dela Airlines as a Flight and International Purser. She traveled worldwide and learned how important it is to understand and respect different cultures. While at Delta Airlines, she received training and certification in Conflict Management and Resolution. She was also a Critical Incident Response Team member who worked with Flight Attendants who had undergone trauma while on the job.
In 2001, she entered the Georgia State University Heritage Preservation and Museum Studies Program in Atlanta, Georgia. She interned for the National Park Service Southeast Region on The National Historic Landmark Program. She worked as a researcher at Drayton Hall, a former rice plantation in Charleston, South Carolina. 2004 she graduated with a Master of Heritage Preservation from Georgia State University. She attended the University of Virginia Historic Landscape Institute and worked at Monticello, Virginia, in the Summer of 2005. In the Fall of 2005, she began working on her Doctorate at Georgia State University, and her dissertation was “The Draytons of Drayton Hall: Land Kinship Ties and the Atlantic World.” In 2019, she attained her Doctorate. In 2021, she attended The Society of Georgia Archivists Institute and earned an Archival processing and administration certificate.
She was an archivist at The Breman Museum, the Atlanta History Center, and The Smyrna Historical Society. In the Fall of 2023, she began work as an educator at The Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her area of research is the ancient Middle East, archaeology, and Greek and Roman art. She is also studying risk management at UNESCO and Glam sites and the provenance of ethical collecting of art and artifacts for museums.