University Historian, Provost’s Office 

Professor, Department of History

Areas of expertise:

• Public History (i.e., museums, tourism, preservation, monuments, public controversies, commemorations like the VA250^th)
• JMU’s history and development (1908-present), Harrisonburg’s history, Shenandoah Valley history and growth
• James Madison, Dolley Madison, Montpelier, disputes over Madison’s memory and legacy
• History of higher education in Virginia and the South
• US society and culture in the 19^th and 20^th centuries

Mulrooney is the inaugural university historian at James Madison University. For more than a decade, she served as senior associate vice provost with a complex administrative portfolio that included JMU's nationally recognized general education program; faculty affairs related to recruitment and retention; and academic policies on curriculum and transfer. She co-founded JMU's Center for Civic Engagement to amplify Madison's political legacy on campus and collaborated with colleagues at Montpelier to build an institutional partnership. Since 2005, she has served as a tenured faculty member in the Department of History, teaching undergraduate and graduate students. As chair of the campus History Committee since 2022, she leads efforts to study, document and interpret JMU's institutional past through exhibits, walking tours, memorials, archival collections and public programming.

An interdisciplinary scholar and practicing public historian, Mulrooney's research blends U.S. history, ethnography, cultural geography and public history. She is especially interested in questions of cultural identity, including how individuals define themselves as members of groups and how different groups relate to one another within communities. Her most recent book, Race, Place and Memory: Deep Currents in Wilmington, NC, 1740-2010 (2019), grew out of her work with the 1898 Centennial Foundation and appears in the Cultural Heritage Studies series published by the University Press of Florida. Her previous publications examine coal miners in Pennsylvania, shipbuilders in Newport News, Virginia, and Irish immigrants at the du Pont powder mills in Delaware.

Mulrooney earned a bachelor's degree in historic preservation from the University of Delaware and master's and doctoral degrees in American studies from William & Mary.

Media contact: Eric Gorton, gortonej@jmu.edu.