Board Members
Haleigh Marcello
(she/her/hers)
Founder, executive director
Haleigh Marcello is a Ph.D. candidate in American History at the University of California, Irvine (expected to graduate June 2026). Her research interests broadly encompass the histories of gender and sexuality in the mid-to-late 20th century United States. She is currently working on completing her dissertation research on the influence of suburbia on Orange County queer activism.
Haleigh is trained in archival research, oral history, digital humanities, and public history. She is passionate about ensuring that history does not stay within the confines of academia, and is freely available to the public — especially the communities it came from. For more information on Haleigh, please visit her website.
Anat Schwartz
(she/her/hers)
Co-founder, chief Financial Officer
Anat Schwartz is a feminist scholar interested in community-based research and transnational feminist activism. Anat is an Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian Studies (feminist emphasis) from the University of California, Irvine in June 2022.
Anat is interested in reproductive justice, digital sexual violence, community-engaged research, and queer feminist activism. She is trained in intersectional and interdisciplinary research, including archival research, qualitative methods, and ethnographic research methodologies. For more visit her website.
Angelique Hulce
(she/her/hers)
treasurer, artist
Angelique is an artist working in Brooklyn (website).
Elizabeth Hulce
(she/her/hers)
Secretary
Elizabeth has a bachelors degree from UC Riverside in Sustainability Studies, with a focus on gender, sexuality, and how environmental changes impact minority populations. Her research touches on viewing global climate change through a feminist lens.
Staff & Consultants
Kevin Nam
(he/him/his)
Web Admin
Consults on website development and management
Interns
Emily De La Torre
(she/her/hers)
2026 – Current intern
Emily is a senior History and Political Science double major at UCI. She has a broad range of historical and academic interests including philosophy, American politics and policy, oral histories, Latine histories, digital humanities projects, coding, games, and more. Her recent research projects have focused on the impact of American executive policies on the Latine communities in Southern California, in particular the history of immigration, detention, and violent policing that precipitated the ICE raids. Her main interests continue to be to tell the stories of everyday people throughout history and the unique perspective it brings to larger historical narratives. Too often we constraint historical narratives to a select few voices, but the more voices, the more accurate and holistic our understanding of the past, and thus the present becomes.
Kass Malcor
(they/them/theirs)
2024 – Current intern
Kass Malcor (they/them/theirs) Kass graduated from Irvine Valley College in Spring of 2024 with their AA-T in History, and transferred to California State University, Long Beach in Fall of 2024 to continue studying American History. Their independent research interests have been focused on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in America, though more broadly they hope that as part of the California Queer History Project they can participate in the maintenance and passing down of queer history as a whole. Kass plans to pursue a Ph.D in American History in order to eventually teach at a community college level and continue sharing their knowledge. They strongly believe not just in the importance of queer history but making sure people know that history, especially to help people in the queer community know that they have always belonged in the world.
Lily Amidon
(she/her/hers)
2024 -2025 intern
A fifth-year student majoring in History and Gender and Sexuality Studies at UC Irvine, Lily Amidon (she/her) previously attended Santiago Canyon College, graduating in 2022 with Associate of Arts degrees in History and Gender, Sexuality, Women’s Studies. Her research interests are very broad and include women’s history, political history, intellectual history, European history, history and media studies, gender and media studies, media studies and sports studies, and sports and gender studies. Lily’s most recent research projects are Built on Hope: The Feminist Star Wars Project, her honors thesis “Une Résistance Égale: The Gendering of Resistance in World War II France,” and her forthcoming articles in The History Teacher (“History (Podcasts) for All: Democratizing and Diversifying the Field of History”) and The Macksey Journal (“City on the Lagoon: Lagos as the Colonial Lettered City”). She joined the OCQHP to develop her digital humanities and archival research skills before attending graduate school, and she is also passionate about uncovering and exploring marginalized histories of gender and sexuality and making that research accessible.
Hunter Ung
(he/him/his)
Fall 2023 – Winter 2024 intern
Hunter is a 4th year history major at the University of California, Irvine. His research interests include Cold War Latin American history and counterculture movements in the United States.
Hunter loves finding the humanity and untold stories that are a part of history and is more than excited to begin researching LGBTQ+ stories in Orange County. Hunter writes: “This is especially interesting to me because I have seen how close minded the people in my hometown, Huntington Beach, can be.”
Savannah Gonzalez
(she/her/hers)
Fall 2023 – Winter 2024 intern
Savannah is a third-year history major at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests are eclectic, ranging from Ancient Classical Societies to Cultural Movements in the United States. Savannah loves dissecting aspects of cultures and society that were once important to communities and have since been hidden or pushed aside. As someone raised in Orange County with an interest in its history, Savannah is excited to start helping on bringing the queer history of Orange County to the surface for others to see.
Sarah Pérez Muñoz
(she/her/ella)
Winter 2024 intern
Sarah is a fourth-year double major in Political Science and Chicano Latino Studies with a minor in Spanish at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests span from potential policies for immigration reform to understanding how immigration status influences political engagement. Sarah is deeply passionate about sociopolitics and aspires to serve as a policy advisor for the federal government one day. She attributes her academic and professional interests to her upbringing as the daughter of Mexican immigrants. She has joined OCQHP to broaden her understanding of the Queer community and to cultivate critical research skills that will aid her in her graduate career pursuits.
Harry Tate-Pascua
(he/him/she/her)
Winter 2024 intern
Parent of a 10-year-old grumpy cat, Harrison is a third-year sociology and English major at UCI. Harrison’s interests range from many areas, whether it be his mutual aid work providing aid to transgender and gender non-conforming people within his hometown of Santa Clarita or her artistic endeavors being the co-founder and Guild Master of Ye Olde Theatre Eaters, a UCI Shakespeare club dedicated to making theater accessible and diverse. Harrison plans to get his master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and his PhD in sociology, specifically on recontextualizing therapy with a sociological approach. Harrison is excited to be helping to preserve OC queer history, and is especially excited to be able to apply a sociological lens in regards to understanding why events happened and what it means now sociologically speaking.