Dr. Collins joined the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in July 2024 as an Assistant Professor of Social and Spatial Justice. She holds campus affiliations with the Democracy Lab, the Design Lab, the Indigenous Futures Institute, and The Scripps Center for Marine Archeology. Dr. Collins received her Ph.D. in Communication from UC San Diego in 2019, followed by a Cathryn P. Gamble Social Impact Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC San Diego and a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of History at UC Irvine. Her primary interests include public memory and the built environment, historic preservation, California and the American West, and the Black Pacific. 

Dr. Collins is currently under contract with UC Press for her first book manuscript exploring the making of race and place at Old Town San Diego State Historic Park. Her articles have appeared in journals including UC Press’ California History, the International Journal of Transitional Justice, and Public: A Journal of Imagining America; and her methodologies include archival methods, ethnographic study, media production, and public history exhibition. Dr. Collins' second major research project examining Black folks’ long connections to what is now the U.S. Pacific received funding from California Humanities and two major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her research has also been supported by the Bylo Chacon Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation / US Latino Digital Humanities Center, UCSD Frontiers of Innovation Scholars Program, the UC Consortium for Black Studies in California Project, the Herbert I. Schiller Communication Dissertation Fellowship, and the UC Office of the President. 

A highly rated instructor and recipient of a UCSD Panhellenic Teaching Award, Dr. Collins will offer new undergraduate and graduate courses on historic preservation, heritage tourism, environmental histories of race, and the history of San Diego, and teach various courses on research methodology.