1600’s Symposium:The Beginning of the City
Russell Shorto is the author of the bestsellers Smalltime, Revolution Song, Amsterdam, and The Island at the Center of the World. His most recent book is TAKING MANHATTAN: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America. He is the director of the New Amsterdam Project at the New York Historical and senior scholar at the New Netherland Institute. In 2009 he was given a knighthood by the Dutch government for advancing Dutch-American historical awareness. In 2018 he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
Jaap Jacobs (PhD Leiden, 1999) is affiliated with the University of St Andrews. He has specialized in the early American history, specifically the Dutch in the Americas in the early modern period. He has taught at Leiden University, the University of Amsterdam, Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and the University of St Andrews. His books include A firm peace and sincere friendship? Four Centuries of Dutch-American Stories; The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America. He is currently working on a biography of Petrus Stuyvesant.
Eric W. Sanderson is the inaugural Vice President for Urban Conservation Strategy at the New York Botanical Garden. Formerly he was a Senior Conservation Ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Sanderson is the author of the best-selling book, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City (Abrams, 2009). The Mannahatta Project, conducted over decade, investigated the historical streams, ponds, springs, shores, hills, forests, and wildlife of Manhattan Island on the eve of Henry Hudson’s discovery in 1609. The project led to a web map and site (since rebranded welikia.org), an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, and major press coverage, including a profile in The New Yorker and a cover of National Geographic Magazine. Sanderson is currently pursuing the Welikia Project, on the historical and contemporary ecology of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and surrounding waters, and Vision maker.nyc, an on-line forum to help the public to envision and share ecologically functional and climate-resilient designs for New York. Sanderson wrote, Terra Nova: The New World After Oil, Cars, and Suburbs, an investigation of the ecology of the 20th century American economy, which was published in 2013. In 2016 he co-editted Prospects for Resilience: Insights from New York City's Jamaica Bay. Sanderson has published extensively in wildlife and landscape conservation, with over 90 papers, book chapters, and technical reports, which have collectively amassed over 13,000 citations (Google Scholar, Oct. 2022). He is currently writing the follow-up to Mannahatta, tentatively titled, The Welikia Atlas, on the five-borough historical ecology of New York City. Sanderson holds a Ph.D. in ecology, with emphasis in ecosystem and landscape ecology, from the University of California, Davis. He is based at the NYBG in New York City's greenest borough, The Bronx.
Oscar Hefting is a cultural entrepreneur. He graduated in Classical Archaeology at the Amsterdam University (UvA) and specialized in Dutch Heritage Overseas. As Director of the New Holland Foundation he organizes projects, and stimulates research, education and promotion on colonial heritage and its effects on todays societies.
Sandra Lazo has been a Trustee of the New Amsterdam History Center (NAHC) since 2023.
She holds an S.B. degree from M.I.T. and an M.A. degree from N.Y.U., both in Economics. Sandy worked in economic consulting, with clients primarily in regulated industries, such as electric utilities. An avid researcher into her family history, Sandy became fascinated by colonial Dutch New York after discovering that she is an eleventh-generation descendant of Cornelis Antonissen Van Slyck, who immigrated to Rensselaerswyck in 1634. A long-time member of the New Netherland Institute, Sandy has funded NNI’s Van Slyke Article Prize almost since its inception. She also supported NAHC’s presentation “The Prize Papers Collection – The Vrooman Letters” by Dr. Frans Blom at Columbia University in the spring of 2023.
Peggy King Jorde fights to preserve the stories buried beneath our feet. This Harvard Loeb Fellow helped spark a movement that saved New York City’s African Burial Ground—a discovery that rocked the nation when archaeologists unearthed the remains of over 400 enslaved and free Africans in Lower Manhattan.
As Special Adviser to Mayor David Dinkins and later Director of Memorialization, King Jorde was one of the masterminds behind the creation of America’s first African Burial Ground Monument and Interpretive Center, transforming a forgotten cemetery into a powerful symbol of remembrance. She personally oversaw the design competitions for the memorial and advised on the sacred repatriation ceremony that returned ancestral remains to their final resting place.
Zachary Edinger is a graduate of Queens College (CUNY) and Fordham Law School. He has held positions at Morgan Stanley and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Since 2011, he has served as the Sexton of Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish community in North America, where his family has worshipped since the mid-19th century.
Reverend Edinger is passionate about sharing the rich history and customs of Congregation Shearith Israel with a wider audience through engaging tours and educational classes. He regularly hosts a Zoom class titled “A Random Walk Down Mill Street,” delving into the congregation’s storied past.