Biography

Tessa R. Campbell (Tulalip/Tlingit) is a former graduate of the University of Washington’s iSchool where she obtained her MLIS. She has a combination of 12 years of experience working in both academic and public libraries. She also obtained her master’s in museum studies from Johns Hopkins University in 2017. She applied her acquired museology knowledge to her position as a curator for her tribal cultural center where she worked for 13 years developing exhibits, giving public presentations, and overseeing museum collections. Tessa’s collaborative approach to museum curation resulted in her receiving the 2018-2019 Washington State Historical Societies’ Annual Peace & Friendship Award in partnership with the Nordic Heritage Museum.

She is currently a full-time PhD Candidate at the UW iSchool where she is researching the health-seeking behaviors and needs of local tribal community members with behavior change attitudes pertaining to their personal health and wellness. She currently assists her advisor Dr. Miranda Belarde-Lewis on an Indigenous curation research project which honors Indigenous worldviews and Indigenous research methods. She is a recipient for the ALA Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship (2022-2025) and passionate about tribal and local history, she is an Executive Board Member for HistoryLink.org. She dreams to teach in the future and her goal is to indigenize her teaching experience in academia. Her teaching experiences include teaching a course in the iSchool, working previously for her tribal education department and teaching TOEFEL and ESL classes in community colleges. She is ​also ​currently ​enrolled at Evergreen State ​College studying ​her tribe's traditional ​practice of Coast Salish Wool Weaving which she is ​using as a conceptual framework for her dissertation work.