Gillian A. Brownlee
DDes Candidate
gbrow48@lsu.edu
MA Interdisciplinary Studies, Texas Tech University
A native of South Louisiana, Gillian grew up reading the early 20th-century travel books of Richard Halliburton, writing letters to Dr. Bob Brier about mummies, and in general developing a life-long love of things ancient and historical. After graduating from Louisiana State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology, she moved to Texas, where she had been spending summers working on excavation and preservation at the archaeological site Lubbock Lake Landmark. She completed her master’s degree in museum science, geoscience, and biology from Texas Tech University, with plans to continue to the doctoral level once she could narrow down her subjects of interest a little more. She took a brief breather working at St. Joseph Seminary College in Covington, La., as a library technical assistant, and added a love of library science to her passion for the conservation of artifacts.
In the summer of 2019, she discovered the possibility of a new doctoral program offered jointly by LSU’s College of Art & Design and the School of Library & Information Science. She quickly applied and began her doctoral studies in the Doctor of Design in Cultural Preservation program (with an emphasis in archival studies), and hopes to combine archiving with her love of paleontology.