Post-Mellon Foundation Grant Opportunities in Applied History
Become a leader and engage wider audiences in historical听reflection!
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, race听and the challenges and opportunities facing native peoples.
The Mellon Grant concluded in August, 2024. The Applied History Initiative extends its most heartfelt thanks to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for generously funding opportunities which led to Applied History training for over 100 early and mid-career scholars. Despite the grant's conclusion, we still intend to offer individual and group workshops that train a new generation of听historians听to become experts in the field of Applied History. Our Applied History Toolkit profiles听the 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鈥檙e about to find out.
Reconfigure, realign, and 鈥渞epurpose鈥 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 (鈥淗ow can I help?鈥), and then move fast to enlist your audience in helping you to help them.
Reflect鈥攚ith intensity鈥攐n 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鈥檚 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鈥攁nd you鈥攆ree of the legacy of boredom.
Skills Repurposing
鈥Skills Repurposing鈥 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.
2025 Skills Repurposing 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鈥攁nd most underutilized鈥攔enewable resources of the American West today.
鈥 Patty Limerick
