A headshot of Moira, a white person with short brown hair and glasses with black oval frames. They are wearing a gray turtleneck sweater with three brown buttons and smiling. In the background, out of focus, is a black bookshelf full of books.

Moira Armstrong is a PhD candidate in American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark, focused on public history, disability studies, and U.S. history of gender and sexuality.

Moira’s dissertation project, “Queer Turning Points Reconsidered: Aromantic Resonances in United States History,” examines the history of gender and sexuality through an aromantic lens, asking how aromantic theory can help shed new light on historical alternative kinship arrangements like Boston marriages and lesbian feminist communes. They also maintain an active research interest in the COVID-19 pandemic. Using interdisciplinary methodologies from crip theory, public history, and social science, they investigate the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on disabled and multiply marginalized communities and the role of historical memory in COVID-conscious practices and activism. Their research has been supported by grants from the Rutgers-Newark American Studies Department, the Huntington Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Sheila Y. Oliver Center for Politics and Race in America, and Rutgers University Equity and Inclusion.

Their work is published or forthcoming in several academic journals and edited volumes, including Memory Studies, Graduate History Review, and The Routledge History of Queer America. Their have presented their work at numerous national conferences, including the American Historical Association, National Women's Studies Association, Oral History Association, and Sexuality Studies Association and received best paper awards at the Three Rivers Graduate History Conference, Kent State University Stark Student Conference, and Northeast Popular Culture Association Conference. They have also presented their research at seminars hosted by the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Birkbeck Institute for Gender and Sexuality.

Flyer with GEMMA in black block letters, underlined at the top, and an illustration of an East Asian woman wheelchair user, a standing butch woman with spiky hair and her arm around a South Asian woman, and a Black woman wheelchair user.
A box of pinback buttons all with queer themes. Centered is a red button, which says in Coca-Cola brand font, "Gay Love" and "it's the real thing."
Front cover of a photocopied lesbian periodical with the headline "A Kiss Does Not a Revolution Make."

Moira’s work across Rutgers University-Newark has included research assistantships with the Queer Newark Oral History Project, Teaching Against Erasure, and the Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar “Potentialities of Justice: Toward Collective Reparative Futures" and teaching assistantships for the courses 9/11 in United States History, Critical Disability Studies, and Sexuality and Activism, bridging the American Studies, History, Urban Education, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies departments.

They are also a dedicated public historian. They have worked on archival projects for the Montclair History Center and Museum of Transology; as a dramaturg for First Kiss Theatre, Burning Attic Theatre, and New Jersey Play Lab; on exhibits for Queer Britain, the Museum of Transology, and OutHistory; and as an oral historian for the Queer Pandemic, Imagining A-Spec Futures, and Rutgers Strike projects. They also volunteer as a copywriter and editor for Otherness Archive and OBSCURAE Productions and serve on the National Council on Public History's Accessibility and Disability Working Group and Oral History Association Diversity Committee.

Moira holds an M.A. with distinction in gender, sexuality, and culture from Birkbeck, University of London in 2023, where their dissertation, "Choosing to Remember: A Queer Disabled History of the COVID-19 Pandemic in England," won the Lynne Segal Prize for best dissertation related to gender and sexuality studies at the university. They also earned bachelor's degrees in English and history, summa cum laude with honors, from Kent State University in 2022.

Moira stands in front of their Queer Pandemic exhibit at Queer Britain. On the wall hang four portraits of interview narrators and a shelving unit with a small figurine, a paper holder, and a plant hanging on the wall. There is also a work from home
Moira is speaking on a panel in a conference room, with a projector showing their OutHistory exhibit on disability and the homophile movement.
Moira, holding a clipboard, helps a woman check in to the Sawyer Seminar.