AHA Standards & Guidelines
Improving the Status of Non-Tenure-Track Faculty: Recommendations for History Departments (2020)
These recommendations are designed for department chairs, many of whom can influence change in such important areas as the integration of NTTF into departmental life and cultures.
Statement on Right to Engage in Collective Bargaining (2022)
The AHA endorses the right of all historians, including employed graduate students, to organize and join unions or other collective bargaining units and engage in collective bargaining if they choose to do so.
AHA Resolution Supporting Scholars off the Higher Education Tenure Track (2019)
In 2019, the AHA adopted a resolution in support of scholars off the higher education tenure track and expressed its commitment to support, encourage, and engage the thousands of history scholars currently working off the higher education tenure track in a variety of settings.
Guidelines for Broadening the Definition of Historical Scholarship (2023)
These guidelines lay the foundation for a broad expansion of what constitutes historical scholarship. It is by no means limited to the examples it invokes, or to academia and its standard professional ladders. These guidelines can be adapted to any institution in which historians work and where historical scholarship is an expected aspect of that work.
Professional & Career Resources
Where Historians Work
Where Historians Work is an interactive, online database that catalogs the career outcomes of historians who earned PhDs at universities in the United States from 2004 to 2017.
AHA Career Center
Whether you’re looking to find a job or to advertise a position, the AHA Career Center is the go-to hub for connecting with history professionals.
AHA Career Contacts
Since its launch in early 2015, the AHA’s Career Contacts program has arranged hundreds of informational interviews between current PhD students (junior contacts) and history PhDs (senior contacts) who have built careers beyond the professoriate.
Data on Non-Tenure-Track Faculty
AHA Ad Hoc Committee on Contingent Faculty
The AHA Council formed this committee with the charge of analyzing how working conditions for contingent history faculty affect educational quality in the classroom as well as quality of life; and to respond to these findings with specific and cost-conscious recommendations addressing working conditions, institutional culture, and student learning.
Data on the Historical Discipline
The AHA collects and shares data on employment and hiring, professional affairs, and more.
2017-18 Humanities Departmental Survey
The American Academy’s Humanities Indicators has fielded three rounds of the Humanities Department Survey to provide a fuller picture of the field, and features data related to non-tenure-track faculty in their reports.
AHA Regional Conferences
For the past decade, the AHA and local partners have held a two-day conference in Texas. In 2023, the AHA hosted a conference in Utah, and in 2024 in Michigan. We will host a conference Virginia in spring 2025.
