Jill Schuler

Originally Canadian, Jill spent a portion of her childhood in France before settling in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2007. She returned to Canada to complete a B.A. in History and International Relations at the University of Toronto, and spent a year studying abroad at SciencesPo - Campus de Reims, working on her French and developing a passion for material culture. Upon graduation, she returned to North Carolina to earn her M.A. in Maritime Studies at East Carolina University. Her thesis, attempting to contextualize material salvaged from York River that dated to the Battle of Yorktown, led her to becoming the assistant state underwater archaeologist for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. During her time in Virginia, Jill also worked for the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission as the research fellow for the Tale of Two Ships project, an IMLS-funded project uncovering and disseminating new information on QAR's previous identity as the French slave ship La Concorde.  Through her work with the commission, Jill travelled to France and Martinique to conduct archival research and published her findings in the North Carolina Historical Review.

Jill has worked on a variety of field projects, ranging from documenting wrecks in the Tar River, to target diving for evidence of the Paleo-Suwannee river channel off the coast of Cedar Key, Florida, to producing a 3D model of an abandoned, half-submerged 19th-century canal tunnel in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She is an SDI Divemaster and a certified scientific diver with the American Academy of Underwater Sciences. She is a board member of the North Carolina Maritime History Council and co-editor of their peer-reviewed journal, Tributaries, as well as the membership coordinator for the North American Society for Oceanic History. Jill joined the UAB team in 2025.