Meet the Speakers

Roger Eardley-Pryor

Roger Eardley-Pryor is a historian of science, technology, and the environment and an interviewer with the Oral History Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Roger earned a B.Phil. in Interdisciplinary Studies from Miami University in Ohio in 2000, and in 2014, he completed his Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). At UCSB, he became a National Science Foundation graduate fellow in the Center for Nanotechnology in Society. From 2015-2018, Roger held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the Center for Oral History at the Science History Institute (formerly the Chemical Heritage Foundation). His work explores ways that twentieth and twenty-first-century scientists, culture-makers, and political actors have imagined, explored, or cohered with nature at various scales, from the atomic to the planetary. Roger’s oral history work includes interviews with Nobel laureate scientists, pioneering environmental lawyers, government regulators, and grassroots climate activists.

Maryellen Burns

Maryellen Burns is a culinary journalist, author and community historian. She coordinates a regional oral history archive project for the Sacramento Area History Consortium and has developed story- based podcast, radio, public television broadcast, theater, and interactive museum exhibits throughout California. She is currently on the board of five state and regional history organizations including CCHS.

Steve Swatt

Steve Swatt is an award-winning political reporter with twenty-five years of journalism experience with the San Francisco Examiner, United Press International in Los Angles, and KCRA-TV (NBC) in Sacramento. He was the lead interviewer for the Valley Broadcast Legends Oral History project and has co-authored author of two books on California history, that relied heavily on oral histories. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.

James C. Scott

James C. Scott has been a reference librarian/archivist with the Sacramento Public Library since 2000. For most of that period, he has worked in SPL's Sacramento Room, where he's co-authored five books on Sacramento history and developed a video series to capture the voices of veterans. He holds a bachelor's degree in history and political science from Marquette University and has master's degrees in European history and library and information science.