People, Staff

Mike Thomin is the manager of the Destination Archaeology Resource Center. He is also a regular writer for the Unearthing Florida radio program broadcast on NPR member stations across the state of Florida. Mike received his BA in History and MA in Public History from the University of West Florida. Mike has spent nearly a decade in the museum field, is a Certified Interpretive Guide with the National Association for Interpretation, and has worked with several organizations on heritage interpretive projects and programs across the state including the Florida Anthropological Society, Florida Division of Historical Resources, Florida State Parks, U.S. Forest Service, and National Park Service. He has curated a number of museum exhibits on a range of diverse topics from piracy in the Gulf of Mexico to the roles women played in northwest Florida during the Great Depression. He currently serves on FPAN’s Archaeological Tourism Task Force and on the Trail of Florida Indian Heritage Board of Directors. His research interests include Mississippian period southeastern Native Americans, maritime history of the Gulf of Mexico during Florida’s Territorial Period, public history, and public archaeology.

Dr. Sorna Khakzad is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate and faculty member at the University of West Florida and the Florida Public Archaeology Network. She is assessing cultural/archaeological sites and heritage tourism facilities in Northwest Florida in order to provide recommendations for future cultural heritage preservation and for the improvement of heritage tourism in the region. Sorna earned a doctoral degree in engineering from KU Leuven, Belgium, in 2015 and a second doctoral degree in Coastal Resources Management from East Carolina University in 2016. She has a M.Sc. in Architecture from Azad University in Iran in 2004 and obtained an Advanced Masters in Conservation of Monuments and Historic Sites in 2008 from KU Leuven. Her research focuses on coastal and maritime cultural heritage, as well as traditional communities. She studies interdisciplinary approaches toward the management of cultural resources for cultural tourism development and the socioeconomic impact of heritage preservation for the benefit of communities and individuals in line with sustainable development goals. She has worked on international projects in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.

Dr. Laura K. Clark started with the Florida Public Archaeology Network in 2017. She graduated from the University of South Alabama with a B.S.B.A. in Marketing, earned a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science with a concentration in Information Architecture, and a Ph.D. in Information Studies from Florida State University. Laura was a Marketing Director and Hospital Instructor along the Gulf Coast and spent three years working as a public librarian. She is a member of the Florida Library Association (FLA), Society of Historical Archaeology (SHA), and the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE). She is also currently serving on the FLA Outcomes and Standards Committee. Laura’s research interests are evaluation and assessment, literacy, marketing, curriculum development, emergent literacy, self-determination theory, policy, and preservation. Her research has focused on interdisciplinary assessment. Her dissertation (2016) has been selected to be included in the American Libraries May/June issue, upcoming article: Notable Dissertations. The title of her dissertation is: Do you do birthday parties?: Caregivers' perceptions of quality emergent literacy programming in libraries and their motivation for attending. She has an article based on her dissertation that has been accepted by LISR (one of the best journals in our field). Here is the citation: Clark, L. (in press). Caregivers’ perceptions of emergent literacy programming in public libraries in relation to the National Research Councils’ Guidelines on Quality Environments for Children. Library and Information Science Research.