May 2025 Intern Insights: Dr. Jacob Robinson

Dr. Jacob Robinson

Dr. Jacob Robinson, Graduate Assistant

MAAV would like to extend a personal thank you to Dr. Robinson and his work over the past year. His wit, intuition, and passion for telling unraveling the complexities of identity in Appalachia have changed MAAV for the better. We are truly grateful to have him on our team.  

My first involvement with MAAV was assisting with the listening session held in Galax, VA, which is my hometown. It has not been often over my several years as a Virginia Tech student that I get to connect with my community through Virginia Tech, but MAAV not only encouraged me to take the lead in key logistics of the session but also empowered me to spread the word. MAAV trusted me to know my community, and there’s real power in that trust. It reflects their belief in the community, which is something many scholars and activists often overlook. The people of this region have long experienced outsiders coming in with all the "right answers," but MAAV understands the importance of humility. They recognize that they don’t have all the answers, and they understand that they might not always be the best to lead. 

As a graduate student in Sociology for the last five years, there haven’t been many opportunities where my academic work has made it into the communities of the region. But MAAV changed that. Over the last year, serving as MAAV’s graduate research assistant, I’ve visited new towns and cities near and far from my hometown. Along the way, I’ve met incredible people and built connections with neighbors in communities I never expected, and I learned from them every step of the way! 

It’s not often that I get to be part of a project like MAAV, but I will continue to share how fortunate I am to be a small piece of the larger MAAV puzzle, helping generate new connections and contributing to the memorialization of many who have been forgotten and disregarded.