O’Grady is a staff archaeologist at the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History. He was an archaeologist for the Oregon Department of Transportation from 2002–2005, and has also worked for the Burns District Bureau of Land Management. He has served on fourteen University of Oregon field schools since 1994, first as a student, then as assistant, supervisor, and instructor. His field school operations are currently focused on Clovis sites in southeastern Oregon, including Sheep Mountain and Sage Hen Gap. Primary research interests include hunter-gatherer subsistence practices, late Pleistocene – early Holocene cultural transitions in the Great Basin of western North America, zooarchaeology, mobility patterns, and remote sensing applications, particularly ground penetrating radar. His Master’s research “Human Occupation Patterns in the Uplands: An Analysis of Sourced Obsidian Projectile Points from Playa Villages in the Fort Rock Uplands, Lake County, Oregon” was an exploration of highland village settlement and mobility patterns in the uplands between the Fort Rock and Summer Lake basins in south-central Oregon. His Ph.D. research “Before Winter Comes: Archaeological Investigations of Settlement and Subsistence in Harney Valley, Harney County, Oregon” is an examination of mid to late Holocene multi-elevation land use patterns encompassing wetland to upland settings.

UO Archaeological Field School Website