PROPOSAL TYPE
Roundtable
SEEKING
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
- Seeking Specific Expertise
RELATED TOPICS
- Labor and Organizing
- Reflections on the Field
- Teaching and Training
ABSTRACT
When the public visits museums and historic sites, their primary conduit is often an interpreter. Active interpretation is rich with pedagogical literature, but interpreters are regarded at many institutions as little more than temporary workers in customer service, with consequences for the quality of educational programs. Financial, administrative, and professional barriers prevent the development of full professional skills. This roundtable will discuss the current issues facing interpreters and solutions to these problems; topics include professional stigma, economic strain, and professional training. We will consider what it means for the public history field to put front-line interpretation at its center.
DESCRIPTION
This roundtable seeks to bring together panelists with diverse experiences and perspectives on interpreter professionalization. The panelists proposing this session are Nathan Schultz, site manager at Alamance Battleground State Historic Site in North Carolina and board member of the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums (ALHFAM); and Talia Brenner, PhD candidate in Public History at North Carolina State University and a part-time interpreter for North Carolina State Historic Sites. We are seeking panelists with expertise in public history advocacy and labor; management at large museums; and diverse interpretive experiences. We will welcome offers from potential panelists or anyone who would like to reach out and simply share their experiences; we also welcome input for topics and discussion questions.
This session strives to identify the barriers in interpreter professionalization and uncover solutions. Our goal is for attendees to better understand issues and responses in interpreter professionalization and to reflect upon their own institutions and experiences.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly:
Talia Brenner, North Carolina State University, [email protected]
All feedback and offers of assistance should be sent by November 15, 2025. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
OOOh! This feels very important. The NCPH has a task force exploring questions of labor in public history. They can probably help you identify labor organizers or others who can help bring that dimension to your project. You can send an inquiry to Sarah Marsom [email protected] and/or Alena Pirok [email protected] who are the incoming and outgoing chairs of the task force.
Agree that this is a very live set of questions. Even teasing out the different standpoints of interpreters from research historians will be illuminating for some conference participants. And laying out the challenges presented by interfacing with a broad public, especially in this fraight moment, could be illuminating.
This is definitely a timely topic! Some suggestions for related field readings:
“Do Better – Love(,) Us: Guidelines for Developing and Supporting Grant-Funded Positions in Digital Libraries, Archives, and Museums” – https://dobetterlabor.com/
“Nothing about it was better than a Permanent Job” – Report of the New England Archivists Contingent Employment Study Task Force
Do the folks at the National Association for Interpretation have any resources on this topic that might be useful?
I work with AASLH’s Historic House Affinity Committee which held a summit on the Future of Historic House Interpretation in April 2025. I would challenge your comment, “interpreters are regarded at many institutions as little more than temporary workers in customer service, with consequences for the quality of educational programs.” While that may be true in some institutions, the majority of HHMs and other history organizations I work with take interpreter training very seriously and provide high quality education programs. Their goal is to retain good interpreters and they invest in them as such (although the pay is still lacking). Let me know if you would like examples of organizations doing this well for your program.
Nathan, I’d recommend talking with Lacey Wilson about this as well. Overall I think your premise is great and there are sites that don’t take the care to fully work with their interpreters (I’m thinking about those sites who have seasonal staff and honestly treat them as disposable) and I think there is a way to tell that truth alongside sites that have taken the great pains to invest in their interpretive staff and have looked at certifications, professional development and constant training.
Dear Bethany, that would be great! Thank you so much. My email is [email protected]