Mellon Sponsored Applied History Trainings
Become a leader and engage wider audiences in historicalĚýreflection!
In December of 2018, Patty Limerick was awarded an $800,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for an Applied History training program tying historical understanding to real-world solutions for modern problems.
Through a series of courses, projects, networking events and summer programs, graduate students, postdoctoral students and faculty will combine their historical knowledge with practical skills. Under the guidance of mentors, participants will craft responses to recurring issues in the West, including wildfires, natural resource management, gender, culture, raceĚýand the challenges and opportunities facing native peoples.
We offer individual and group workshops that train a new generation ofĚýEnvironmental Historians and Historians of the American WestĚýto become experts in the field of Applied History. Our Applied History Toolkit profilesĚýthe following skills that you will have fun acquiring:
Figure out the sectors of society who need to be guided by your historical research; they may not know it yet, but they’re about to find out.
Reconfigure, realign, and “repurpose” your academic skills to ensure that you will never lose your audience, and they will never want to lose you.
Cultivate customs for beginning with the essential question (“How can I help?”), and then move fast to enlist your audience in helping you to help them.
Reflect—with intensity—on whether you want to be an activist or a moderator, or some hybrid thereof. Applied Historians are free to champion a cause, but they should sketch out the cost/benefit implications of every posture available to them.
Never lose sight of the fact that historians affiliated with universities, colleges, museums, historical societies, governmental agencies, non-profits, etc., etc., are all each other’s professional kinfolk, and stay constantly on the alert for opportunities to work in partnership.
Practice techniques of self-management to stay calm when historical subjects set off strong feelings. Recognize that holding steady and coping with these episodes of agitation will make you a stronger historian (and provide you with memorable stories to tell when disarming the next assemblage of the crabby).
Recognize that a sector of the population will always need to tell you that history was their least favorite subject in high school, and recognize that it is still your mission to invite those folks to value historical perspectives and awaken to their relevance. Patience, persistence, and bursts of creativity will set them—and you—free of the legacy of boredom.
Skills Repurposing
Ěý“Skills Repurposing” is an all-expense paid weekend workshop intensive in Applied History with Patty Limerick which started in the Fall of 2019. This workshop trains recent Ph.D. recipients, History postdocs, and adjunct faculty to become applied historians who can draw on the expertise of scholars and industry leaders from a range of disciplines to reach wider audiences.
2022 Skills Repurposing Weekend Workshop
Summer Workshop
Our three-week, all-expense paid, “Summer Workshop,” takes a deep dive into the “repurposing” of young historians’ skills. Explore the Denver Metro/Rocky Mountain region while expanding on your scholarly pursuits as you investigate new avenues to broaden your ability to “network” into uncharted terrain. Applications are open to recent Ph.D. recipients, graduate and undergraduate students attending schools from both within Colorado and afar. (Previous attendees of the “Skills Repurposing” weekend workshop intensive will have the opportunity to return to Boulder to act as mentors, while also giving presentations at the workshop, using their own adventures as parables and case studies of the potential of Applied History.)
2023 Summer Workshop
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Historical perspective proves to be a wonderful way to assess contemporary conflicts and dilemmas. Unleashed and empowered, young scholars who cultivate the skills of applied history could become a major force in enhancing the well-being of Western communities in the 21st century. Their energy and knowledge add up to one of the most valuable—and most underutilized—renewable resources of the American West today.
– Patty Limerick
