The town manager of Cape Charles reached out to the Public History Center in 2018 to help the town assess public opinions about the community’s substantial legacy of historic homes and buildings. Over the course of two years, the PHC conducted a multi-phase project.

First, we led a series of charettes and public meetings to ascertain the major issues at stake in the community.

Second, we conducted a literature review to identify economics and history papers written in the 2010s related to the issues of historic preservation and community value. We conducted in-person surveys during the peak tourist season, and in the fall, mailed over 1,100 surveys to utility customers of the town.

We received more than 10 times the average response rate of typical mass mailings. We analyzed the data and submitted a final report to Cape Charles in August 2020, incorporating various tools such as multiple regression analysis to help town leaders understand the nuances of the relationships between public opinion and economic impacts of tourism, real estate values, and the historical built environment.

In February 2021 Nonprofit Management and Leadership accepted for publication a Public History Center paper concerning how nonprofits and government agencies can assess the economic impact of a one-time event. This highly selective Wiley journal is the leading academic outlet specializing in quantitative approaches to nonprofit administration.

The paper used data from the 2015 Yorktown visit of the Hermione tall ship – a historic replica of the vessel used in 1781 to transport the Marquis de Lafayette to help George Washington in the Revolutionary War. We contributed in various ways to the Yorktown landing of this vessel.

The paper concluded, “Using three survey-generated data points per respondent, nonprofits can replicate the methods of this study to assess the economic impact of other special events such as the one exemplified herein. With estimates such as the ones examined herein, policy makers can contrast the benefits of special events to their costs, to determine if such events are worthwhile investments.”

Over the course of 2016 and 2017, we developed a conceptual map of economic flows to and from a quasi-governmental entity managing portions of a National Park Service site. We surveyed over 700 respondents – including residents, history tourists and beachgoers – generating substantial data about the meaning of the facility to them and their families. We produced a final report quantifying the facility's economic impact and presented key findings to their board of directors on June 30, 2017.

A substantial sub-field in public history relates to the preservation of historic structures and their adaptive reuse to contemporary purposes. Each such project must be approved by various public officials, often in a confusing process including many layers of authority.

Hall, associate director of the PHC, co-chaired an Urban Land Institute 2020-21 study group tasked with identifying and disseminating best practices and recommendations for how such entitlement regulations can be conducted and, potentially, reformed.

In 2019, the Tulane School of Architecture together with other agencies, including the federal government’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the National Park Service’s National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, announced a nationwide competition for research proposals to be considered for their eighth National Forum on Historic Preservation Policy: A Critical Examination of Preservation and the 21st Century City.

Among a large volume of applications, the Public History Center was selected to present research concerning how climate mitigation strategies used by the U.S. military could be adapted to preserve historic structures and districts. The paper, “Adapting Military Mitigation Strategies to Historic Preservation,” was presented on April 16, 2021 to an international audience.

The town manager of Cape Charles reached out to the Public History Center in 2018 to help the town assess public opinions about the community’s substantial legacy of historic homes and buildings. Over the course of two years, the PHC conducted a multi-phase project.

First, we led a series of charettes and public meetings to ascertain the major issues at stake in the community.

Second, we conducted a literature review to identify economics and history papers written in the 2010s related to the issues of historic preservation and community value. We conducted in-person surveys during the peak tourist season, and in the fall, mailed over 1,100 surveys to utility customers of the town.

We received more than 10 times the average response rate of typical mass mailings. We analyzed the data and submitted a final report to Cape Charles in August 2020, incorporating various tools such as multiple regression analysis to help town leaders understand the nuances of the relationships between public opinion and economic impacts of tourism, real estate values, and the historical built environment.

Shuck-Hall is engaged as a member of the Atlanta History Center’s Advisory Committee for a new gallery construction about Southeastern indigenous people. The committee is studying concept and design and exhibits and programs, as well as applying feedback from First Nations and the Atlanta community.

The Public History Center was one of three organizations nationwide to obtain a National Park Service Maritime Heritage Program Grant for 2016-17. We obtained matching funds and in-kind support from Christopher Newport University, the Gwathmey Memorial Trust, the Mariners’ Museum, Huntington Ingalls Newport News Shipbuilding, Hydroid, the Center for Naval Analysis and the Office of Naval Research.

This initiative had four major components:

• In cooperation with the Mariners’ Museum Library, we cataloged, digitized, transcribed and interpreted a large body of correspondence known as the Letters Home Collection.
• We created a substantial body of original content from these letters and developed and launched a website (12explorers.org) featuring a wide range of student-written, professionally edited virtual exhibitions.
• We disseminated this information in the form of three physical exhibits, six events (three grand openings and three supplementary lectures) open to the public. The public events included a grand opening for the Age of Innovation Exhibit that was keynoted by the United States chief of naval operations, Admiral John Richardson. That event also included the CEO of Newport News Shipbuilding, Jennifer Boykin. Over 1,600 people attended the exhibit’s grand opening, which featured maritime innovations such as drones from the Office of Naval Research.
• We presented findings from data collected in association with the grant, including a presentation at the 11th National Maritime Heritage Conference in 2018.

Shuck-Hall was the editor and creator of the Legacy of William R. Walker Jr. and the Establishment of Christopher Newport College. She assisted PHC student fellow Jannis Ernst with locating GPS coordinates, researching locations and historical content.

This historical tour examines the legacy of Newport News civil rights activist William Walker Jr., and includes a walking/driving tour with locations related to his history, as well as historical text, photos, archival records and GPS maps.

Shuck-Hall was commissioned by a legal firm representing the Alabama-Quassarte tribal town of Oklahoma to investigate claims concerning tribal land located in present-day Alabama. Her deliverable, “Antecedents of the Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town of Oklahoma,” has been shared with tribal advocates and members of Congress as the tribe pursues their claim in court.

Hall was invited by the Yale School of Management’s Millstein Center for Corporate Governance to research lessons learned from how shareholders of the Virginia Company of London managed and governed their business affairs. The paper was presented at the Origins of Shareholder Advocacy conference in New Haven, Connecticut.