Rebecca Amato is Director of Teaching and Learning at Illinois Humanities. Prior to this, she was the Associate Director of the Urban Democracy Lab and Associate Faculty at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU. Her research and writing focus on the intersections between cities, space, place, and memory, with a special focus on mobilizing the public humanities for social justice advocacy. Her work has appeared in Urban Omnibus, Radical History Review, Radical Roots: Civic Engagement, Public History, and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism, ed. Denise Meringolo, and A People’s Guide to New York City, eds. Carolina Bank Muñoz, Penny Lewis, and Emily Molina, as well as exhibits throughout New York. She has been a staff member and consultant at a variety of history institutions in New York, including the Brooklyn Historical Society, the American Social History Project, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and the Museum of the City of New York. She holds a PhD in United States History from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.