Michelle Follette Turk is a historian of occupational health and safety, and the state of Nevada at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her work examines labor, hazards, and health and safety programs in the greater Las Vegas area from early building of the railroad through dam construction, chemical manufacturing during World War II, nuclear testing, and resort industry employment. Turk authored scholarly articles and lectures on occupational health history, Hoover Dam, and Las Vegas medical history as well as A History of Occupational Safety: From 1905 to the Present (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2018). In December 2020, a revised and expanded edition of her book will be released with a new title:  Gambling with Lives: A History of Occupational Health in Greater Las Vegas.  She earned her doctorate in the history of the twentieth century American West with specialties in public history from UNLV. She serves on the Board of Directors of Preserve Nevada, a statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of Nevada’s cultural, historical, and archaeological heritage, and teaches Nevada and American history courses at UNLV. Turk is the granddaughter of Kirk V. Cammack Jr., MD, the second board-certified surgeon in Nevada and co-founder of the Lion’s Burn Care Center at University Medical Center (UMC) in Las Vegas. She lives in Las Vegas with her husband and two children.

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