Trailblazer
Becky Nicolaides is an LA-based historian and consultant specializing in the history of suburbs, metro areas, and Los Angeles. She’s author of The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945 (Oxford, 2024), and two other award-winning books on suburban history. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and other outlets. After receiving her Ph.D. from Columbia University, she became a tenured faculty member at UCSD, then moved into full-time consulting for public history projects, individual communities, film/TV, and podcasts. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Huntington Library, UCLA, and the EU Erasmus+ Programme. She served on the LA Mayor’s Working Group on Civic Memory, and is cofounder of the consulting firm History Studio. Becky is a lifelong Angeleno and bleeds Dodger blue. Read more about Becky at www.beckynicolaides.com.