Alison Orton is an American and European historian who researches the impact of immigration and labor on the brewing industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries, specifically how national conflicts in Europe were reflected in beer culture in the United States. Orton talked to Tiah Edmunson-Morton on Zoom on May 28, 2020 about how the availability of sources impacted her dissertation topic; how she uses secondary sources to focus her research question; the importance of talking with peers, professors, and archivists; strategies for learning about national conflicts and individual people (e.g. police records, demographic data, sales records, union organization archives); experiences researching in Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic; advice for planning international research trips; and the importance of being open to outcomes you didn't expect.
