Director of Public History and Engagement

Director of Public History and Engagement

Full Time
Amherst has taken a leadership role among highly selective liberal arts colleges and universities in successfully diversifying the racial, socio-economic, and geographic profile of its student body. The College is similarly committed to enriching its educational experience and its culture through the diversity of its faculty, administration and staff.
Amherst College invites applications for the Director of Public History and Engagement position. The Director of Public History and Engagement is a full-time, year-round position. The salary offered will vary based on a number of factors, including but not limited to relevant education, training, and experience, tenure status, and other nondiscriminatory business considerations. Amherst College is pleased to provide a comprehensive, highly competitive benefits package that meets the needs of staff and faculty and their families.

The Director of Public History and Engagement provides strategic leadership and program management in uncovering, contextualizing, and learning from the complex history of Amherst College. Reporting directly to the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion, the Director works collaboratively with faculty, staff, students, alumni, and external partners to advance institutional memory, with a particular focus on the history of underrepresented communities.

The Director oversees a portfolio of existing historical recovery, public-facing initiatives, curricular connections, and thoughtful community relations while simultaneously helping design new, innovative learning and storytelling opportunities. The Director should be versed in university racial reconciliation and archival efforts, which will help them serve as a key facilitator in shaping how Amherst understands its past, engages its present, and considers its future.
Lead relevant committees and working groups in order to advance the public art and story-mapping projects, including helping bring them to fruition, monitoring the conditions of the items, assessing their utilization, and planning changes and growth.
Oversee the creation and presentation of relevant physical and digital materials to on-campus and possibly off-campus audiences.
Advance learning opportunities (e.g. public art, story-mapping, oral histories) within the curricula and advance new curricular strategies to learn from Amherst's history.
Identify and create new learning opportunities for Amherst's history beyond the existing projects.
Advance dialogues and community-build opportunities around the history.
Create learning spaces for faculty on the teaching and research of Amherst's history, including the development of new learning opportunities.
Oversee and enhance dedicated digital platforms, websites, and multimedia storytelling tools.

Historical Recovery and Relationship Building
~ Oversee the growth of research into the histories primarily from those of underrepresented backgrounds, including but not limited to archival research, oral histories, and investigative projects.

Aggregate and help guide student research projects within and outside of courses to identify both thematic intersections and gaps for future study.
Sustain, repair, and cultivate meaningful relationships with regional and descendant communities relevant to Amherst's history, serving as an institutional point person and coordinator for community members, including organizing on-campus visits and visits to descendant communities.
Master's degree in History, Public History, African American Studies, American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Indigenous Studies, Museum Studies, Digital Humanities, Higher Education Administration, Social Justice education, or related field; or an equivalent…