Mosaic Scholarship: Marissa Brown

Marissa Brown, who is pursuing a Master of Science degree in Library and Information Science at Long Island University and a Master of Arts degree in Museum Studies at New York University, is a 2026 recipient of the Mosaic Scholarship given by the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The $5,000 scholarship is given to a student who demonstrates potential for scholastic and personal achievement and who manifests a commitment both to the archival profession and to advancing diversity concerns within it.

Brown’s first encounter with archives was as a research assistant at the Albany Institute of History and Art, when she scouted for documentation of Black life in the Albany area during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She discovered documentation of African Americans of various economic standings, from servants of the Ten Broeck Family to soprano singer Jeannie Bishop in the Van Rensselaer Family Scrapbook. Through digitization efforts and community engagement events, she presented these materials to the Albany community and helped show that the Black experience is not monolithic. 

Assisting with the African American Oral History Project in Newburgh, New York, Brown reviewed and contextualized twenty-eight oral histories from residents of the East End Historic District, restoring voice to a predominantly Black community whose history had been erased. She tracked down organizations named in the interviews and made community ownership of the archive a core part of the project. She created an accessible online map that identified over twenty businesses, churches, and properties that no longer exist due to urban renewal. Her mentor, Lori Salmon of NYU Libraries, noted that “this work is archival practice in its truest sense: building a record and a relationship simultaneously.”

As Salmon concluded, “The Mosaic Scholarship exists for archivists like Marissa: those who have already committed to diversifying the profession as a way of working, treat community as the center of their practice, and who are building careers that will make the historical record more complete and more just.”

First awarded in 2009, the Mosaic Scholarship also provides recipients with a one-year membership in SAA and a complimentary registration to the SAA conference.