Faculty & Staff
Kevin Greene, Ph.D.
Center Co-Founder & Co-Director
Kevin Greene is an Associate Professor of History in the School of Humanities at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he is the Director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. Through the Center, Dr. Greene is currently the principal investigator for the Mississippi Oral History Project, a research initiative funded by the Mississippi state legislature to qualitatively document Mississippi’s history, culture, and heritage in the 20th and 21st centuries.
In addition, he is a faculty fellow in the Dale Center for the Study of War and Society where he researches African American experiences in war and society from the first WWI to the present. He teaches courses in American history, African American history, Urban history, World history, Research Methodology, Oral History, and Cultural History.
Andrew Wiest, Ph.D.
Center Co-Founder & Co-Director
Dr. Andrew Wiest is a Professor of History in the School of Humanities at the University of Southern Mississippi. He was raised in Hattiesburg and attended the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Illinois, Chicago. Dr. Wiest has taught at the Royal Military Academy and at the United States Air Force Air War College.
Dr. Wiest has published seventeen books, including the bestselling Boys of 67: Charlie Company's War in Vietnam and Vietnam's Forgotten Army, which won the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book Award. Wiest was nominated for an Emmy for the National Geographic Channel documentary Brothers in War. He is also the Founding Director of the Dale Center for the Study of War & Society.
Paul Lyon
Managing Director
Paul Lyon is a retired Lieutenant Colonel with 37 years of active duty and Mississippi National Guard military service. He has served multiple deployments, including a 2005 company command in Iraq, a 2009 Brigade Staff officer in Afghanistan, and in 2017, he served as the SECFOR South and Camp Patriot Commander in Kuwait.
Lyon has also served in various positions with the Mississippi National Guard (MSNG), including as Training Officer and Administrative Officer for the 150th Engineer Battalion, Education and Services Officer at Joint Forces Headquarters, Training Officer for the 168th Engineer Brigade, and MSNG Deputy G3 culminating as the MSNG Outreach Director.
While serving as the Education Officer, and later as the Outreach Director, Mr. Lyon worked extensively with colleges, universities, and businesses in Mississippi to develop programs that help guardsmen and their families in attaining educational and professional goals through the State Educational Assistance and the Work for Warriors Programs, among many others.
Lyon has numerous military awards, including the Combat Action Badge, Two Bronze Stars, the Legion of Merit, and the Mississippi Magnolia Cross. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Excelsior University, and is married to Jane Lyon from Collins, Mississippi and has four daughters.
-
Elizabeth La Beaud, MLIS, DAS
Digitization and Digital Archives
Elizabeth La Beaud is an Assistant Professor at USM serving as the Head of Library Technology for University Libraries, and the Director of the Mississippi Digital Library (MDL). She also founded and directs the Mississippi Digital Preservation Collaborative (MSDPC).
She holds a MLIS, a certificate in Archives and Special Collections, the Digital Archives Specialist certificate from the Society of American Archivists, and is a Library of Congress trained Digital Preservation Topical Trainer. She serves on the National Digital Stewardship Alliance’s (NDSA) Levels of Digital Preservation Steering Committee and co-chairs the Levels of Digital Preservation Revision Subgroup.
Elizabeth specializes in digital preservation, digitization, project planning and implementation, and copyright as it pertains to digital collections.
-
Maeve Losen, MA
Center Administration
Maeve Losen is the manager for the Center for Digital Humanities at Southern Miss. She holds a dual Masters of Arts in Anthropology & History from USM, as well as a Graduate Certificate in Public History.
Her research interests include 20th century U.S. history, war & society, cultural anthropology and history, museum education, and public humanities.
Before attending graduate school, Losen worked for the National Park Service as an education assistant, during which she gave educational programming on American Civil War topics, specifically campaigns in the area of Richmond, Virginia, as well as programs about the first African American, female bank president, Mrs. Maggie L. Walker.
-
Isabel Loya, MA
Project Management
Isabel Loya is the Collections and Transcription specialist for the Center for Oral History and Culture Heritage at The University of Southern Mississippi.
She received both her Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Arts in history at Southern Miss. Her thesis research focused on Mexican migration to Mississippi during the 1970s and 1980s.