FACULTY

Jonathan Shea

Jonathan D. Shea is a native of New Britain, Connecticut and is the grandson of Polish and Irish immigrants who settled in Connecticut near the turn of the last century. He holds a BS degree cum laude from Georgetown University, Washington D.C. in Spanish and advanced degrees in Slavic Languages and Literatures and Library Science and Archival Management from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and SCSU respectively. As part of the coursework for these degrees he attended the Universidad de Madrid (Spain),  St. Petersburg State University (Russia), Uniwersytet Jagiellonski (Poland) and Yale University.

  He has taught Spanish, Polish and Russian at CCSU, various campuses of the Connecticut Community College system , Trinity College and the University of Massachusetts. Additionally he speaks Italian and French and has had some language training in Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Belarussian, German, Chinese and Vietnamese.

A Connecticut certified teacher in nine subject areas,  he was formerly employed with the New Britain Public School System, Division of English as a Second Language (ESL) and Bilingual Education, before joining the faculty at CCSU.

 He has been involved in various ethnic history, immigration and genealogy projects and organizations for the past two decades. These include serving as the reference archivist for the Polish Genealogical Society of Connecticut and the Northeast,  and as coordinator for various cemetery inscription projects in New England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Poland and Ireland.  He also is involved in data  coordination for numerous data bases including,  a  large data base delineating the European origins of thousands of pre WWI Polish immigrants to New Britain and other cities in Connecticut.  A holder of the title Accredited Genealogist, he is a frequent contributor to ethnic genealogical societies’ publications.  He has led archival tours to Poland and has had on site research experience in state and ecclesiastical archives in the U.S., Poland, Lithuania, Ireland, England and Wales. In addition to the above , he has lectured extensively and conducted workshops on numerous aspects of family history research with special emphasis on language issues. These lectures include local presentations  in a variety of venues, as well as regional and national genealogy and local history organizations throughout the US, including the National Archives in Washington D.C.

 He is the author of numerous articles and several books in the field including Following the Paper Trail: A Multilingual Translation Guide,  which includes document translations and research advice for thirteen languages. More  recently he authored In Their Words: A Genealogical Translation Guide, volume I, Polish and volume 2, Russian. He is also the co-creator with Ceil Wendt Jensen and William F Hoffman of an educational video  entitled Going Home: A Guide to Polish American Genealogical Research.