Marcelo Aranda joined NCSSM-Morganton as Digital Humanities Coordinator in July 2022. Born in Nicaragua, he grew up in South Florida in close proximity to space shuttles, Cold War politics, and a diverse community of people from all over Latin America. As a child, he became curious about the historical accidents, circumstances, and decisions that led him to the United States, which in turn sparked his study of history. Marcelo studied history at UC Berkeley and Stanford and has written scholarly articles about early modern scientific networks and practices in the Spanish Empire and has merged new digital methods with traditional historical instruction. He taught in the SIMILE program at Stanford, and was then chair of the History Department at Quarry Lane School in Dublin, CA. He has also written about historical world-building in video games. His other interests include local food, graphic novels, animation, and science fiction novels. Marcelo, his wife, Lucinda, and their four cats are pleased to be part of the Morganton community.   BA, History, University of California, Berkeley PhD, History, Stanford University