Megan Crutcher, Ann Plato Postdoctoral Fellow in History at Trinity College, has received a grant from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology for the project, “Where Trees Meet the Tide: Documenting Traditional Watercraft Construction in Liberia, West Africa.”
“Where Trees Meet the Tide” documents the design, construction, and cultural significance of traditional dugout canoes and larger, motorized “Fanti boats” in Liberia, West Africa. The watercraft sustain more than 90 percent of the nation’s artisanal and small-scale fisheries.
Amid pressures to replace these vessels with fiberglass hulls, this project aims to document and analyze the design and construction process of both watercraft types. Using visual media and interviews, the project will record construction and maintenance techniques and seek to understand social networks among builders and fishers along Liberia’s coast. By analyzing design choices shaped by materiality and cultural heritage, the study aims to preserve knowledge of maritime traditions increasingly lost elsewhere in West Africa.
Crutcher is a historian and archaeologist with research and teaching interests at the intersection of public history, maritime archaeology, and Africana studies. Crutcher’s scholarly focus has been on the maritime history and archaeology of the Atlantic World and West Africa, especially Liberia. Crutcher earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology (Nautical Archaeology Program) from Texas A&M University in 2025 and holds an M.A. in Public History from Duquesne University (2020). In Liberia, they co-direct the Kru Coast Heritage Initiative, an archaeological heritage preservation project in southeastern Sinoe County. Crutcher also is a certified rescue diver and has worked on excavations, surveys, and archaeological conservation projects on land and underwater in Spain, Portugal, Liberia, Canada, and the U.S.
Trinity College Associate Professor of History Jonathan Elukin has received a yearlong residential fellowship for the 2026-27 academic year at The Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.
The Trinity College campus is among the landscapes featured on the Olmsted Trail, a new online resource offered by the Olmsted Network cataloging projects shaped by pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.
Juan Rayo ’27 has been named to the National Student Voting Honor Roll for his leadership in Trinity’s ongoing nonpartisan campus civic engagement initiative, TrinVotes!
The American Academy of Arts and Letters has recognized Associate Professor of English Ethan Rutherford with the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Literature for his debut novel, North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther.
