As a professor of history and UC Davis associate dean for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor teaches and coaches them through both common challenges, like how to connect with a faculty advisor, and very thorny ones that don’t always have clear solutions.

Historian Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor’s recent book details how auctions created the foundations for our modern economic system as it made and unmade people and communities by collectively setting a price on anything for sale.

Historian Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor traces the lives of urban women in early America to reveal how they used the ties of residence, work, credit, and money to shape consumer culture at a time when the politics of the marketplace was gaining national significance.