The Center for Collaborative History

Founded in the spring of 2012, the Princeton history department’s Public History Initiative seeks to integrate a public engagement orientation into the life of the graduate program. The students and faculty affiliated with the Public History Initiative believe that all history is, or should be, “public” history and that the sharp distinction often drawn between academic and public history is largely artificial. Through an ongoing series of colloquia, public lectures, methods workshops, and off-campus trips we hope to:  

• Engage history’s publics, the multiple non-academic audiences that exist beyond the boundaries of the university
• Establish collaborative relationships with other public engagement initiatives and organizations on campus, at other universities, and in the community at large
• Develop skills relevant to public history practice among our graduate students and undergraduates
• Create venues in which to discuss and highlight the public engagement projects in which our students and faculty participate
• “Shift the gaze,” or refocus the vision, of the academic community in terms of what constitutes a well-rounded graduate education in history
• Educate students about the non-academic options for history Ph.D.’s
• Provide a forum through which the Princeton history department as a whole can consider the social and cultural meanings of history in the 21st century

Coordinator:
Richard Anderson, Ph.D. Student

Graduate Student Steering Committee:
Jane Manners
Sarah Matherly
Corrine Kannenberg
Adrian Young
Kellen Funk
Maeve Glass
Paris Spies-Gans
Tommi Lankila

Faculty Advisors:
Professor Martha Sandweiss
Professor Anthony Grafton

Please contact Richard Anderson (raatwo@princeton.edu) with questions.