Trailblazer
Becky Nicolaides is an expert on the history of the 20th century, and the author of several award-winning studies of suburban life in America. After receiving her Ph.D. from Columbia University, she became a tenured faculty member at UCSD, then moved into full-time consulting for public history projects, cultural resources, film/TV, and podcasts. Her work focuses on the history of cities, suburbs, and metro areas — and especially LA. She’s author of The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945 (Oxford, Jan 2024), My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (Chicago), and The Suburb Reader, co-edited with Andrew Wiese, two editions (Routledge). Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and other outlets, and her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, Huntington Library, UCLA, and the EU Erasmus+ Programme. She’s a lifelong Angeleno and co-founder of the consulting firm History Studio.