Jessica Puff has a B.S. in environmental design from Syracuse University and an M.S. in historic preservation from Eastern Michigan University. Over the past eleven years she’s worked at the Hawaii State Historic Preservation Division and the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office as an Architectural Historian. She administered programs under the National Historic Preservation Act and worked on Preserve America grant projects like Michigan Modern and the Michigan Modern: Design that Shaped America exhibitions and symposia at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Grand Rapids Art Museum. As part of the Michigan Modern team, Jessica won an award from the Michigan Historic Preservation Network for education and community outreach in 2014. She also co-wrote a chapter on Florence Knoll, “The Knoll Look”, within the book Michigan Modern: Design that Shaped America (2016). She is a founding member of the Michigan Chapter of DOCOMOMO.
Jessica’s academic interests include: the impact of historic preservation on history, culture, and BIPOC communities; the evolution of geographical space through time and across civilizations; and the role architecture plays in historical events. Currently, her research concentrates on settler colonialism and construction of preservation policy in the U.S. She is investigating the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 as a supporting structure of colonization in the U.S.