Where sport meets storytelling: Mia combined a love of hockey and history into a digital archive that brings the game’s past to life.

Mia Soccio is a graduate of York University’s BA History program and Public History Certificate, now pursuing her MA in History at York. During her undergraduate studies, she discovered the perfect intersection of her interests in sport and history by completing a 120-hour Curatorial Placement at the Hockey Hall of Fame. 

Over the course of her 12 week placement in Winter 2025, she stepped directly into the world of public history. Collaborating with both the curatorial and digital development teams, she helped develop a series of interactive digital experiences designed to deepen visitor engagement. Mia contributed to the brainstorming and refinement of ideas ranging from app based games to themed museum tours, each crafted to bring the institution’s rich hockey history to life in new ways.

Her efforts helped shape a mobile museum experience - a suite of digital features that include scavenger hunts and immersive tours, inviting visitors to explore pivotal events in hockey history. Mia saw firsthand how digital tools can transform the way audiences interact with museum collections, and how technology can modernize historical storytelling for a new generation of visitors.

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"My placement significantly shaped my personal, academic, and professional development. This role allowed me to experience history in practice."

She also undertook more advanced interpretive work through a reassessment of the Formative Years of Hockey exhibition. Drawing on her academic training in public history, she reviewed existing text panels using historiographical analysis to verify historical accuracy. Her most impactful contribution was identifying and resolving an inconsistency in the recorded number of teams in the 1886 Kingston hockey league. After presenting comparative research using primary and secondary sources, her recommended revisions were approved and permanently integrated into the exhibition.

“My placement allowed me to experience history in practice,” says Mia. “I saw how evolving scholarship reshapes public interpretation and reinforces the responsibility museums carry when presenting the past.”

Inspired by her experience working at the intersection of sport heritage and public history, Mia is actively continuing her scholarship and public history initiatives. She is excited to present this summer at the Canadian Historical Association Conference in Charlottetown, PEI. Her talk will examine ways that digital tools can modernize museum collections and transform visitor interaction.