PROPOSAL TYPE
Workshop
SEEKING
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking Specific Expertise
RELATED TOPICS
- Leadership
- Labor and Economy
- Reflections on the Field
- Teaching and Training
ABSTRACT
Public history practitioners often navigate complex narratives, community expectations, and sustained workload demands that affect long-term career sustainability. This interactive workshop introduces a structured approach to identifying early indicators of cognitive and emotional strain before burnout becomes visible.
DESCRIPTION
Public history practice requires sustained intellectual engagement, emotional awareness, and ongoing responsiveness to communities and institutions. Professionals in this field often interpret complex and sometimes difficult histories while balancing public expectations, organizational demands, and limited resources. Over time, these pressures can affect clarity, consistency, and long-term career sustainability, often before burnout becomes visible.
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:
Renee Sunday, DRS Global, [email protected]
All feedback and offers of assistance should be sent by June 5, 2026. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
I think this is a timely and important topic to explore. What I would love to see from this is a toolkit of sorts that helps folks walk through a couple of phases of burnout–pre, during and post. Sometimes we don’t see the burnout until it’s either passed or we are in the middle of it, and we need to know how to deal with that. I also see the extreme importance of catching it early, but because many of us are in the weeds, we may miss it.
I would also ALSO love to see something that helps leaders address burnout with their teams and becoming a bit more emotionally intelligent and aware of signs of burnout within their teams. Many leaders expect their teams to just work through it and that creates a huge disconnect and and a bit of resentment leading to unhealthy work environments in an already unhealthy overall atmosphere.