Richard Watts is the Director of the Center for Research on Vermont, a senior lecturer in the Department of Geography, and the founder of the Center of Community News (CCN). Richard is the coordinator of UVM’s Community News Service program, pairing students with professional editors to write stories for community papers. Richard is also the former coordinator of the internship program in the College of Arts and Sciences. During Richard's leadership of the CAS internship programs, student for-credit internships tripled from about 250 to almost 800. In coordination with CRVT, the College of Arts and Sciences created the Community of Practice intern program which led to the successful spin-off of the Community News Service and served as a model for the Center for Community News. As Director of CRVT, Richard increased the budget tenfold and added new programs in book publishing, internships, media and communications, video, and podcasts. Richard also led student research teams that investigated police funding, telecommuting, town official demographics, and Vermont in-migration among others. Richard is a co-founder of Sustainable Transportation Vermont and the teacher of classes in transportation planning, reporting, and Vermont studies.

Trish Denton is an art director, producer, and storyteller specializing in socially engaged art and community-based projects.  She is the founder of In Tandem Arts, a nonprofit organization that creates collaborative theater, storytelling, and multimedia experiences with youth and community groups. At Dartmouth College, Trish was involved with Telling My Story, a documentary theater project producing work within rehabilitation and correctional facilities. She has taught ethnographic storytelling approaches, community documenting, and visual storytelling at Dartmouth College and Castleton College, as well as a variety of university, college, library, and historical society classrooms with Vermont Folklife. As CRVT coordinator, Trish mentors our interns and oversees research, projects, and publications supported by the center. Trish also produces CRVT's events, publishes our research newsletter, and develops content and visual storytelling to strengthen our membership and student initiatives. 

Kevin Graffagnino began his career at the University of Vermont library, where he served as curator of Vermont history from 1978 to 1995, as head of special collections for two years, as a member of the graduate faculty, and as an adjunct member of the Canadian studies program. Graffagnino was library director at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin from 1995 to 1999, executive director of the Kentucky Historical Society from 1999 to 2003, executive director of the Vermont Historical Society from 2003 to 2008, and director of the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan from 2008 to 2019. He was an antiquarian book dealer during his undergraduate years and has conducted benefit book auctions for a number of libraries and museums in Vermont. Graffagnino is the editor or author of 22 books and numerous articles on various aspects of early American history, book collecting, history administration, and related topics. He has served on a variety of state, regional, and national boards, committees, and commissions, and has given more than 1,000 public lectures on historical subjects.

Adrien Sabathier is a political science Ph.D. student and teaching assistant at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His research is focused on social media and the public sphere. Using mostly qualitative and interpretive methods he is interested in understanding how people navigate between online and offline spaces and how they make sense of the world around them.

His current research (Ph.D. dissertation) is an in-depth case study of Burlington, Vermont’s public sphere. Adrien is interested in how Front Porch Forum, Vermont’s own local social media platform, impacts the local public sphere and how it could be a model for a new civically-minded internet. Over the past three years, he has done fieldwork in Vermont and has conducted dozens of interviews for his Master’s thesis. For his current project, he will use surveys, diary, and web tracking methods as well as conduct more interviews. His dissertation supervisors are Nathalie Giger, an associate professor at the University of Geneva, and Ethan Zuckerman, founder of the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at UMass Amherst.

Evan Trafton is a senior studying computer science at the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences with a minor in applied design. His interests include martial arts, snowboarding, and hiking. He is also passionate about design and utilizes this skill in web design and development projects. He is currently working as CRVT's digital ambassador to create a website that equips Vermont newspapers and citizens to track the legislative activity of their local politicians, including bill action, summaries and delegate voting.

Katherine McGee is an undergraduate student in the College of Arts and Sciences, studying environmental studies and history. Some of her interests include environmental and Indigenous history, as well as any history related to the Hudson River Valley, where she grew up. Holding the position of illustrations and book editor intern at the Center for Research on Vermont, she will be collecting documents, maps, artifacts, and many other items from Special Collections. This includes working on current CRVT projects and contributing a column to the research newsletter.