Our Guides

Big Onion has the finest group of tour guides in the city. Most of us are full-time graduate students researching and writing doctoral dissertations in history or a related field. Big Onion guides have high school or college teaching experience and are quite often researching topics relevant to the tours they are leading.

All our guides work exclusively for Big Onion and have completed our rigorous in-house training program and are licensed by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs. Our guides are passionate about the history, architecture and people of New York. We have been called “brilliant”, “hilarious”, “outstanding”, and “irreverent”. Most of our guides, upon completion of studies, move on to successful teaching careers.

President & co-founder of Big Onion Walking Tours and Director of Big Onion Historical Consulting. Seth holds a PhD in American History from Columbia University. His dissertation is entitled “The Provisioning of Barbados from New York and New Jersey, 1650-1765.” As an undergrad he studied Social Thought & Political Economy at The University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Seth is proud to be a Fellow of the New York Academy of History. He has been a consultant on a variety of historical tourism projects including Governors Island, The Presidio, Atlantic City, The Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia and ethnic New Orleans. Seth has appeared on numerous television networks, including BBC, PBS, History Channel, Travel Channel, Arte Television, CBS, and ABC. Former on-camera Historian on, and a Producer of, the Emmy Award winning (13 nominations & one win) series “Toni On! New York”. When not walking the city he can be found walking in the Catskills woods where cell phones don’t work. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Traci & black Labs Genevieve and Tokaji.

Adam Kocurek is a Ph.D. candidate in History at The CUNY Graduate Center, specializing in modern American history. His research lies at the intersections of LGBTQ history, labor history, and the history of higher education. He works as an adjunct lecturer at Hunter College, has held fellowships and teaching appointments across the City University of New York system, and has been an employee with Big Onion since 2018. He has been a Tour Manager since 2025, and currently resides in Brooklyn.

Alice is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She specializes in 19th-century art from the United States and Europe, and her dissertation explores the intersection of gender, labor, and art in the late 19th century through a comparison of the visual depiction of exploited female garment workers in Britain, France, and the United States. She holds a B.A. in English and Art History from the University of Kansas (Rock Chalk, Jayhawk!) and a M.Phil. in Art History from the Graduate Center, CUNY. Originally from Oklahoma, she has happily called New York home since 2008, and has lived in three out of the five boroughs of the city. She currently resides in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Andrew is a historian of print media, humor, and visual culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He received his PhD in Modern European History and the History of Popular Culture from the Graduate Center, CUNY in 2022. His research and teaching interests lie in the history of comics, cartoons, and laughter in the shaping of mass culture, identity, language, and political and social mores in Europe and the Americas. When not giving tours or teaching classes in European, American, or world history, or the history of media and comics, Andrew lives in Brooklyn and enjoys South Florida sports, reading comics voraciously, visiting New York’s art museums he’s already explored hundreds of times, European soccer, pub trivia, and playing old-time banjo music.

Caroline is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at the Graduate Center, CUNY, where she studies nineteenth-century art of the U.S. and Latin America. She received her B.A. in History and Art History from Mount Holyoke College in 2008. Proud to call herself a native New Yorker, Caroline grew up in both New York City and the Hudson Valley and currently resides in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea. In addition to leading tours with Big Onion, she also teaches art history courses at York College (Queens) and City Tech (Brooklyn).

Christine Kelly teaches American and world history at an independent school outside of New York City. She has also worked as an adjunct lecturer at Fordham University where she earned her Ph.D. in 2019. Her research explored race, gender, culture, and social change in American society during the 1960s era, including the role of women artists in the new folk revival whose careers reflected, and supported, second wave feminism. In addition to teaching and research, she has worked in academic administration at Fordham University and Johns Hopkins University.

Fiona is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at The City University of New York’s Graduate Center, specializing in the history of philosophy. Fiona focuses primarily on topics within moral psychology and ethics, especially as they relate to questions in applied ethics. Fiona also recently accepted a teaching assignment at Hunter College. When not preparing for classes or leading tours, Fiona is usually bouldering or hunting down all of NYC’s cheap vegan eats.

Born and raised in New York, Hannah Weinerman, is a community engagement professional with expertise in government and nonprofit leadership. By day she works in New York politics and is the co-creator of a forthcoming narrative podcast about Rudy Giuliani’s mayoralty. Hannah holds degrees from Cornell University and the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College and enjoys helping visitors and locals alike discover the layered history, people and neighborhood that shape New York City.

Ian Gregory is a PhD candidate in History at the City University of New York and holds an MA in History from the University of Chicago. Their research focuses on modern France and the history of the supernatural – particular spiritualism, psychics, and haunted houses. Ian also teaches European history at Lehman College in the Bronx, and currently resides in Brooklyn.

Jack has been the main guide on our Historic Hudson tour for several years. He is a former American history professor who holds an MA (University of Chicago) and PhD (University at Albany) in history as well as a dual BA in history and political science (University of Toronto). His dissertation studied the corporate development of the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company through the lens of the ethnic identity of three generations of corporate management. Currently, he is working on adapting this into a wider work, while developing a Big Onion tour of the downtown Albany historic district. He is a native of Rochester, New York and currently lives in the Capital Region with his husband. He enjoys gaming, Buffalo sports, and his four pets.

Jeremy’s research focuses on 19th-century nationalists in Eastern Europe and their response to the emerging study of historical linguistics, examining how they imagined national prehistories and who they thought belonged to the community. When not walking with Big Onion, he pursues his twin quests to find, and ultimately produce, ever-better dumplings. He lives in South Brooklyn.

Before moving back to Bensonhurst with his family in 2022, Jim received his Ph.D. in Geography from University of Nebraska – Lincoln. Jim is an alumnus of two Critical Language Scholarship programs and has studied abroad in Baku, Azerbaijan and Kharkiv, Ukraine. Born and raised in Flushing, Jim is a Big Onion tour guide by day and developmental editor by night. 

Justin is a New Jersey native pursuing a PhD in political science at Yale University. He previously graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in history and political science and from New York University with an MA in history. He specializes in American political development and institutions. Specifically, Justin is fascinated by the Civil War and how the political landscape constantly evolved in the years leading up to, during, and after the conflict, and how this impacted elected officials, political leaders, and regular citizens alike. When he is not studying or leading tours, Justin is a constantly depressed New York Jets and Mets fan, a curse he assuages with classic television shows like Taxi, MASH, and Boy Meets World.

Justine (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center, and also holds a Doctoral Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies, a Master’s of International Human Rights from the University of Denver, and a B.A. in Political Science and Human Rights from Barnard College. She teaches undergraduate courses in sociology at Queens College, is an occasional election day worker, has worked and volunteered in various roles in the nonprofit world, and is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. In addition to fielding history questions on her tours, Justine is always happy to recommend used bookstores and vegan snacks around NYC. When not at work, she can be found in one of the city’s live music venues, or at home with her cat.

Keith Doherty is a former professor of art history at Boston University and a New York native. He currently evaluates historically significant structures in the greater New York City area for a private company. He is in the process of researching a book on Black-owned farms in the Hudson Valley in the era of Gradual Emancipation (1799-1827).

Kelly Hacker Jones teaches U.S. History at an independent high school on the Upper East Side. She holds a PhD in History from Stony Brook University.

Lance is a historian, musician, middle school science teacher, proud nerd, and long-suffering Mets fan. He received a Ph.D. in history from Stony Brook University where he studied early America and wrote his dissertation on the publication and circulation of secular sheet music in the 18th century. He is currently researching the history of jazz in New York City. In his spare time, Lance frequents bookstores, record shops, jazz clubs, or just wanders around doing whatever random weird stuff catches his eye.

Lee Thomas Richardson is a Ph.D. student in Music at Columbia University specializing in music theory, popular musical culture, and music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His research considers the networks of people, media, and musical knowledge that connect musical communities, particularly fan communities online. He also holds a B.Mus. from the University of Georgia and a M.Mus. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. LT has taught or assisted a variety courses on music including music theory and ear training, Columbia College’s core ‘Music Humanities,’ and a class on the music of Beyoncé.

Malaika Newsome is the Curatorial Assistant at the International Center of Photography in New York City. She obtained her Masters in Art History and Archaeology from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts (IFA), focusing on African and African Diasporic Art during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She has co-curated projects including the  Zora Ilunga Reed’s Intimidation Tactics, the IFA’s Great Hall Exhibition installation by Maia Ruth Lee, Straight Lick as part of  “Black Art Sessions” by Ebony Haynes, and Cultivating Collections: Vitreographs, Glass, Works by Black Artists, and Ceramics at Western Carolina University. She has also collaborated with the Atlanta History Center, the High Museum of Art, and MOCA GA.

Melanie is a History Ph.D. student at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research interests lie at the intersections of race, gender, and law in early nineteenth-century New York, with a focus on gradual emancipation. She received her B.A. in History and Politics with a minor in Legal Studies from Brandeis University, and is currently teaching American History at Lehman College.

Sasha Savannah Doster is a researcher, writer, and curator who is currently a Ph.D. candidate in historical musicology at Columbia University in New York City. Her research focuses on music as a cultural product, expressions of Blackness in classical music during the early 20th century, historiography, staged works of Black culture (e.g. opera and ballet), cultural anthropology, and archivism. She holds a M.A. and M.Phil from Columbia University and B.A. in Music and Anthropology from Furman University. She has been a guide with Big Onion since 2024.