With the sponsorship of the Society for the Humanities, the Department of History at Cornell University invites applications for a two-year Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship position beginning August 1, 2025. 

We seek a scholar with a PhD in History who is also grounded in theoretical and methodological public history approaches, in particular Museum Studies, Historic Preservation, or digital history. This position will involve developing new directions in public history teaching and research, and joining an interdisciplinary group of scholars and students whose projects focus on historic sites, digital media, museums, libraries, archives, and/or local communities. Geographic area and historical era open, but we prefer candidates who focus on climate or energy history, African American women’s history, or LGBTQ+ history in the Americas. The postdoc will teach a lower-level and an upper-level course each year that engages with public history topics and methods (involving, for instance, monuments, museums, oral history, historic preservation, walking tours, historically engaged performance, or documentary film). These courses would emphasize applied forms of historical engagement by undergraduates such as conducting archival research, learning and practicing oral history methods, developing curatorial skills, actively engaging with local and global individuals and communities, and asking theoretical questions about history as a process of knowledge production. The postdoc would play a central role in the Public History Initiative (PHI) and the Critical Inquiry into Values, Imagination, and Culture (CIVIC) initiative, by offering interdisciplinary courses and programming (such as lecture series) relevant to their specific field. 

Applicants eligible for the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 academic years include those who have received the Ph.D. degree after August 1, 2021 and no later than June 30, 2025. International applicants are welcome to apply, contingent upon visa eligibility.