Annabelle Spencer

Graduate Research Assistant

U.S. History: 19th Century, Women & Gender, Digital Humanities, Race, Motherhood, Womanhood, Kinship Networks, Girlhood, Enslavement & Freedom Seeking, Reproductive Autonomy, Spatial Analysis

Annabelle Spencer is a PhD student in History, specializing in Women & Gender History and Digital Humanities. She is a Graduate Research Assistant at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) and an affiliate for the Center for Mason Legacies (CML). She received her BA in History from Austin Peay State University and MA in History with the‬‭ Smithsonian Mason Certificate in Digital Public Humanities‬ from George Mason University. She was previously a GRA for the CML and an intern for RRCHNM on the Smithsonian HBCU History, Culture, and Access Consortium (HCAC) Project.
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Current Research

My current research revolves around discovering and telling the story of two formerly enslaved women named Sarah Ann Brown and Harriet Bell from Fairfax County, Virginia. Brown escaped while pregnant and with her young daughter on the Underground Railroad and Bell purchased 10 acres of the original plantation property creating generational wealth and property ownership for her children as a founding member of the free Black community in Vienna. As this project has evolved, it has explored themes and topics including: reproductive autonomy, fugitivity, motherhood, white women enslavers, fictive kin & kinship networks, space reclamation, and public memory.

Selected Publications

"Spatializing Black Stories: Geographies of Community in Loudoun County, Virginia" - Center for Mason Legacies

"Finding Sarah Ann" - In Historical Society of Fairfax County, Virginia Incorporated annual publication (2023-2024)

"Carrow Hall and Black Methodist History" - Center for Mason Legacies, Black Lives Next Door

"Finding Sarah Ann" - Center for Mason Legacies, Black Lives Next Door- Geographies of Inequity

"The Suffragist Split: Mary Church Terrell, Kate M. Gordon, and Race Relations Within the Women’s Suffrage Movement" - In Theta Delta Student Journal Austin Peay State University

Grants and Fellowships

Andy Smith Prize (BLND Symposium)- March 2025

Josephine Pacheco Award for Best History M.A. Research Paper- April 2024

Randy Beth Clark Endowed Fellowship in U.S. History- April 2023

Andy Smith Prize (BLND Symposium)- March 2023

Education

PhD. History, Fall 2024-Current

M.A. History- with Smithsonian Mason Certificate in Digital Public Humanities, George Mason University, 2024

B.A. History- with minors in Women & Gender, African American Studies, Austin Peay State University, 2022

Recent Presentations

“Spatializing Harriet Bell: Placemaking and Installing Legacies in Vienna, Virginia”- 2025 Christopher Newport University's Telling Women’s Stories: Conference on Women and Gender

"The Masons’ Loudoun County: Discoveries in an Early Republic Account Book"- 2025 Virginia Forum

"Spatializing Black Stories: Geographies of Community in Loudoun County, Virginia" - 2025 Black Lives Next Door Symposium

"Spatializing Black Stories: Geographies of Community in Loudoun County, Virginia" - Thomas Balch Library

"Finding Sarah Ann"- Lewinsville Presbyterian Church Fall 2024

"Caring for Community in Digital Public Humanities"- Smithsonian HBCU History, Culture, and Access Consortium (HCAC) Project Summer Convening

"Inheritance: Slavery & The Cost of ‘Motherhood"- 2024 Virginia Forum

"Finding Sarah Ann"- Historic Vienna Inc. Spring Program