Call for Papers: Infrastructures of Empire and Empires of Infrastructure in the Age of Fossil Fuel Take Off 

Call for Proposals: 2027 SHAFR Summer Institute 

(The 2027 SHAFR Annual Meeting will take place June 24–26, 2027 in Arlington, VA. The Summer Institute is held prior to the conference and can last anywhere from 3 to 5 days).

Call for Nominations

SHAFR’s Nominating Committee is soliciting nominations for elected positions. The positions to be filled via the 2026 election are as follows:

We are writing to share that the call for applications for the 27th Annual TISS New Faces Conference is now open and would appreciate it if you would spread the below message within your networks and encourage any qualified candidates to apply.  

The conference will take place on October 1-2, 2026at Duke University.  TISS will cover all travel expenses for those selected to participate. 

Friday, April 17, 2026: SHAFR Graduate Student Writing Group Paper Workshop, 3pm-5pm ET

During this workshop, three students will present their work for feedback from the other members of the group. Each submission will receive 30 minutes of discussion. If you would like to share your work, please email Robert Diaz at [email protected] and Ryan Metz at [email protected] by March 25, 2026, to let us know that you intend to present. We will accept commitments from the first three individuals who express interest. Currently, we have one slot left. Pre-circulated work should be no longer than 30 pages and emailed to us with a brief introductory memo by April 10, 2026. We will disseminate the papers with folks who RSVP to the workshop. Link for workshop forthcoming.

University of North Carolina Wilmington
Department of History

2026 Virginia and Derrick Sherman Emerging Scholar Lecture
Call for Applications

“The Global American Revolution”

I Defended, Now What?: A SHAFR Roundtable on Dissertating, Publishing, and Everything In-Between
Mar 31, 2026
SHAFR Graduate Student Committee event

Registration link:  http://bit.ly/SHAFRdefended 

Call for Papers, deadline – 1 May 2026

The BIHG Committee invites you to contribute a paper to its 34nd annual conference. We accept both individual papers (of 20 minutes) and complete panel submissions (consisting of three 20 minute papers). As in previous years, we encourage proposals for papers from a wide range of subjects from any approach or period in international history. These include: 

Researchers at Columbia University’s History Lab are looking to recruit SHAFR members to participate in an IARPA-funded research project. We are developing AI systems designed to evaluate the risk of revealing national security secrets from aggregating large collections of less sensitive information. Whereas some argue this possibility may require radically reducing the availability of such information, our project aims to ensure government classification policies and procedures are based on rigorous peer-reviewed research. In this first stage of the project, we are organizing a workshop in which historians will evaluate whether and how AI can create a “mosaic” that reveals information that should be protected.

Participation will take place through a structured online workshop. It will include training in new AI-augmented research methods, such as discussion of prior work on the mosaic effect and demonstrations of research tools, like the FOIArchive search platform. No technical background is required, but participants need to have experience analyzing declassified documents, and some familiarity with U.S. foreign relations in the 1970s. Most of the time will be spent evaluating examples of AI-generated reconstructions of previously classified information from this period. Participants will be compensated and may have the opportunity to participate in future workshops.  

William Appleman Williams Emerging Scholar Grants

Ashley Everson’s project, “Voices of the Valley: Black Women, Radical Politics, and Internationalism in the Tennessee Valley, 1931–1950” offers new perspectives on the history of Black internationalism by shifting our focus from the urban north to the rural south. Based on an interdisciplinary methodology and impressive array of national and international organizations, “Voices of the Valley” illustrates how working-class and poor Black women articulated a radical vision of democracy that was both local and global. Everson is an assistant professor in the Department of African American and Africana Studies at the University of Maryland. She received her Ph.D. in Africana Studies from Brown University in 2025.

Assistant Professor, Department of History in Tuen Mun, for Lingnan University

SHAFR, in partnership with McGill-Queen’s University Press (MQUP), is pleased to announce the launch of the William Burr Prize, an annual award for the best PhD dissertation in nuclear history, broadly defined.

The prize is open to all nationalities and institutions and welcomes dissertations on any aspect of nuclear history, anywhere in the world. Eligible dissertations must have been submitted in final form between 1 January 2024 and 31 December 2025. Self-nominations and supervisor nominations are welcome.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute has opened its application for its postdoctoral fellowships for the 2026-2027 year.

The fellowship welcomes applications from those with terminal degrees in history, political science, economics, sociology, American studies, law, and related fields. Past fellows have specialized in political history, intellectual history, history of U.S. foreign relations, empirical methods, the American presidency, etc.

In Memoriam: Bill Burr

SHAFR members are invited to apply for our June 2026 awards including the Bernath and Dissertation Prizes.  The deadline is 1 February.  Visit https://www.shafr.org/prizes to apply.

SHAFR wrote to the leadership of the University of Nottingham strongly encourage it to reverse its decision to close all the degree programs in the Department of American and Canadian Studies.

Letter of Support for Department of American and Canadian Studies.pdf