Julie Davis

  

I have a Ph.D. in history, and for the past eight years I've taught in the history department at a liberal arts college in Minnesota. I've earned tenure but have felt increasingly alienated from my identity as a public historian and limited in the social impact of my work. Therefore I am leaving my academic position to focus more on fostering public engagement with, and community access to, historical and other humanistic knowledge. I want my work to facilitate a more complex and imaginative public understanding of the past and its relationship to the present.

I'm drawn to the digital humanities community by its interdisciplinary and collaborative nature and its commitment to public engagement. Digital technologies have tremendous potential for connecting people and communities with useful information and transformative ideas. I'm hoping that becoming a more skilled digital humanities practitioner will help me redirect my career away from classroom teaching and toward more public-oriented work.

My research areas include Native American and comparative Indigenous histories; the history of the western Great Lakes region; settler colonialism and interpretations of the past in settler societies; and local history/sense of place.