Rate My Professor Matthew Daley

Matthew L. Daley is Professor of History at Grand Valley State University, where he joined the Department of History as Assistant Professor in 2004, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2010, and to Professor in 2020. He serves as the Public History Internship Coordinator. Daley earned his Ph.D. in History from Bowling Green State University in 2004, with a dissertation titled "City of Mass Production: Building, Managing, and Living in Detroit, America's First Automobile Metropolis, 1915-1933." He previously received an M.A. in History from Wayne State University in 2000, with a thesis on "Pigs on the Water: Technological Failure and Great Lakes Shipbuilding Innovation, 1880-1905," and a B.A. in History from the University of Detroit Mercy in 1997.

A historian of the modern United States with emphasis on the period from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression (1865-1940), Daley's research interests include urban history, Michigan history, Great Lakes history, industrial and historical archaeology, and public history. His scholarship explores public policy and community history in Michigan, the Great Lakes, and the Midwest, with particular attention to housing and infrastructure in Detroit and Grand Rapids, the impact of industrial firms on affordable housing and company towns, and the roles of race, class, and labor. Select peer-reviewed publications are "‘The World’s Greatest Minstrel Show Under the Stars’: Blackface Minstrels, Community Identity, and the Lowell Showboat, 1932–1977” co-authored with Scott Stabler (Michigan Historical Review, Fall 2018), “An Unequal Clash: The Lake Seamen’s Union, the Lake Carriers’ Association, and the Great Lakes Strike of 1909” (The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord, Spring 2018), “Duluth’s Other Company Town: The McDougall-Duluth Company, the Riverside Neighborhood, and World War I Shipbuilding, 1917–1923” (Minnesota History, Spring 2013), and “In the Wake of Disaster: The Lake Carriers’ Association, Welfare Capitalism and the Black Friday Storm of 1916” (International Journal of Maritime History, December 2010). Daley has also produced popular histories, including the booklet "A Land of Great Bounty: A Brief Agricultural History of Ottawa County, Michigan" (2022), and contributed to books and magazines on regional topics. In public history, he has worked as researcher/writer for historic markers, Digital Transition Coordinator for the Grand Rapids Historical Commission, consultant for museums, and curator of the Fr. Edward J. Dowling Marine Historical Collection. He teaches courses such as Michigan History, U.S. Urban Society, Local and Community History, and Industrial Archaeology, emphasizing experiential and place-based learning.