Degrees:
Ph.D., Texas A&M Univ.
M.A., Duquesne Univ.
B.A., Grove City College
Megan Crutcher is a historian and archaeologist with research and teaching interests at the intersection of public history, maritime archaeology, and Africana studies. Crutcher’s scholarly focus has been on the maritime history and archaeology of the Atlantic World and West Africa, especially Liberia. Crutcher earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology (Nautical Archaeology Program) from Texas A&M University in 2025 and holds an M.A. in Public History from Duquesne University (2020). In Liberia, they co-direct the Kru Coast Heritage Initiative, an archaeological heritage preservation project in southeastern Sinoe County. Crutcher is also a certified Rescue Diver and has worked on excavations, surveys, and archaeological conservation projects on land and underwater in Spain, Portugal, Liberia, Canada, and the U.S.
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Historical Archaeology
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Maritime Archaeology/History
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African History
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Public History
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Global History
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Social History
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West Africa
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The Atlantic World
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HIST-282
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Maritime Archaeology of the Atlantic World
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African maritime history/archaeology
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Economic history/archaeology
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Liberia
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Sao Tome and Principe
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Conservation and collections care
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Museum and material culture studies
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Household archaeology
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Postcolonial and decolonial theory
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- Crutcher, M. In Press. Floating Households, Fluid Selves: Racial Identity, Household Dynamics, and Life at Sea in the 18th-Century Luso-Atlantic. In For an Archaeology of Households, eds. Joel Santos and Susanna Pacheco. Bloomsbury.
- Crutcher, M., Gueye, M., & Sarathi, A. (2025). Developing a new theoretical model for West African maritime archaeology. Critical African Studies, 1-19.
- Crutcher, M. & Belton, L. (2025). ‘They Do Not Have Physiognomies of Their Own’: Tracking Racialization of Maritime Professions in the Eighteenth-Century Portuguese Empire. Journal of Social History, 1-23.
- Crutcher, M. & Kondeh, P.D.S. (2025). ‘Mississippi Street Was Eaten by the Sea’: Climate Justice and Coastal Heritage in Liberia. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 1-26.
- Crutcher, M. & Gueye, M. (2024). Maritime Archaeology in West Africa: Environmental Histories, Changing Landscapes, and Archaeologies of Activism. Paper given at the African Studies Association, Chicago, December 2024.
- Crutcher, M. (2023). ‘For King and Empire’: The Changing Political, Economic, and Cultural Identities of Kru Mariners in Atlantic Africa, 1460-1945. Journal of African History 64:3, 437-448.
- Crutcher, M. & Rooney, K. (2023). Narratives of African Maritimity: Early Modern Images of Africans and Their Watercraft. Paper given at the European Association of Archaeologists, Belfast, September 2023.
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- Research funding from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology Discovery Fund, 2024-2026
- Research funding from the Society for Postmedieval Archaeology, 2024-2025
- Yearlong Funded Member, Folger Institute Colloqium on Atlantic Empires, 2024-2025
- Texas A&M University Department of Anthropology, Dissertation Research Grant, 2024
- Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology (ACUA) & RECON Offshore Travel Award, 2023
- Glasscock Center for the Humanities, Texas A&M University, Fieldwork Grant, 2022
- Southeastern Conference (SEC) Emerging Scholar, 2020
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