Robert Forrant is Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and a Lawrence History Center board member. He has been the principal historian on numerous projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Lowell National Historical Park, and Mass Humanities. In 2018 he was the Humanities Scholar in Residence funded by the Massachusetts Endowment for the Humanities to work with the Hatfield, MA Historical Museum. Utilizing newly discovered archives he produced a scholarly article and helped to produce an exhibit on the Porter McLeod Machine Company, a small machine shop that exported the lathes it built around the world. His new book, Interpreting Labor and Working-Class History at Museums and Historic Sites, with Mary Anne Trasciatti, will be published by the University of Illinois Press in June 2022 in its Working-Class in American History series.