Introduction to student interviews with public history and humanities workers

08 September 2025 – Andy Urban

Editor’s Note: This post is part of a 2025 History@Work series authored by members of the NCPH Labor Task Force in response to our Special Open Call on “#Advocacy in the Field.” You can read each post as it’s published throughout the year under H@W‘s #Advocacy tag.  Read More

Let’s talk about work: an invitation to participate in the “Empowering the Public History Workplace” working group at the 2023 NCPH meeting in Atlanta

10 April 2023 – Andy Urban and Alena Pirok

From Amazon and Starbucks unionization drives to the waves of strikes that have roiled higher education in recent months, American workers are thinking critically about labor and moving towards action. Museum and historical site professionals are no different. Projects like Art/Museums Salary Transparency 2019, and Instagram accounts like Museumworkersspeak, and Changethemuseum, have stimulated the conversation among art museum workers, but public historians have been comparatively silent. Read More

Collective bargaining during a pandemic: observations from the Tenement Museum Union

04 February 2021 – Andy Urban 1

Editors’ Note: For more on labor relations at the Tenement Museum, check out the forthcoming May 2021 issue of The Public Historian.

In recent years, the number of unionized workers within the nonprofit sector of the U.S. economy has grown steadily. Read More

Lifting the curtain on living history

29 November 2017 – Andy Urban

Editor’s note: The post is the fourth in a series commissioned by The Public Historian that focuses on essays published in TPH that have been used effectively in the classroom. We welcome comments and further suggestions! If you have a TPH article that is a favorite in your classroom, please let us know. Read More