2026 AHA Nominations

On behalf of the Nominating Committee, I recently submitted to the executive director the nominations for the positions that will be filled by election in 2026. The full slate of nominations appears below. It is the result of more than two months of effort by the members of the Nominating Committee and the AHA staff, both before and after the Nominating Committee’s in-person meeting at the end of January.

The challenge facing each year’s committee is considerable. The “easier” part of the task is to identify and propose individuals who can reliably fulfill the duties associated with a given position, drawing on the committee members’ professional networks and information provided by AHA staff. Determining which of these to propose for a position, however, reflects the more complicated part of the committee’s charge: ensuring that the various AHA constituencies—field specializations, types of institutions, genders, geographies, and career stages—find appropriate institutional expression. This means that the committee does not just strive to produce a “balanced” ballot each year, but that it looks at the existing composition of the AHA Council and the elected committees and constructs the ballot to address the specific vacancies or needs it has identified.

Some choices are straightforward: the Teaching Division, for example, always needs a schoolteacher among its members. For 2026, the bylaws also stipulate that the president-elect not be an Americanist or a Europeanist. Once the committee begins to settle on candidates for a position, those choices start to restrict the options available for the remaining positions. Creating each year’s slate of nomination follows a certain, albeit complex logic. It is not, however, an act of puzzle solving; there is no single “right answer,” just a series of potential configurations that crystallize only at the end of the process.

The committee encourages all members to cast their ballots beginning June 1.

President

Lonnie Bunch III, Smithsonian Institution (secretary; US, museums, African American history, American presidency/sport/film)

President-elect

Tobie S. Meyer-Fong, Johns Hopkins University (professor and chair; East Asia, social and cultural history of China since 1600)
Lynn M. Thomas, University of Washington, Seattle (Giovanni and Amne Costigan Endowed Professor in History and director, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities; politics and gender in East and southern Africa)

Research Division

Vice President
Jane Landers, Vanderbilt University (Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History; colonial Latin America and Atlantic world, Africans and their descendants)
Lara Putnam, University of Pittsburgh (professor; historical methods and digital technology, Latin America and Caribbean, transnational labor/immigration/gender, Rust Belt political participation)

Council Member
Rose Miron, Newberry Library (vice president for research and education; Indigenous history across the Great Lakes, public history and memory)
Margaret Salazar-Porzio, Oatlands, National Trust for Historic Preservation (executive director; public history/preservation/humanities leadership, visual and material culture, American race/ethnicity/civic memory)

Professional Division

Council Member
Jim Ambuske, More Perfect (director of digital history; American Revolution, Scotland, British Atlantic world, public history, podcasting)
L. Bao Bui, University of Illinois, Chicago (visiting lecturer; food politics, military, foreign relations, US Civil War)

Teaching Division

Council Member
Samantha Futrell, William & Mary Strategic Cultural Partnerships (master teacher and president, Virginia Council for the Social Studies; US, secondary writing instruction)
Wayne Zhang, Roald Amundsen High School, Chicago Public Schools (teacher and social studies department chair; world studies)

Council Member, At Large

Christopher Hulshof, University of Wisconsin-Madison (PhD candidate; empire/covert operations/Cold War Southeast Asia)
Andrew Varsanyi, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (PhD candidate; 19th-century Great Plains class/civic association/democratic life)

Committee on Committees

Alan L. McPherson, Temple University (professor; US foreign relations, US-Latin American Relations, global)
Zachary R. Morgan, Ohio State University (associate professor, Department of Comparative Studies; race, slavery, abolition, Afro-Latin American studies, Brazil)

Nominating Committee

Slot 1
Nile Blunt, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (senior director of museum learning; Atlantic world)
Sam Vong, Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (curator of Asian Pacific American History; Asian American, refugees)

Slot 2
Jennifer L. Foray, Indiana University (associate professor; modern imperialism and decolonization, Dutch-Indonesian relationship, pedagogy, methods and historiography)
Karen Petrone, University of Kentucky (professor; cultural, gender, propaganda, war and memory, Russia and Soviet Union, Holocaust education)

Slot 3
James F. Brooks, University of Georgia (Carl and Sally Gable Distinguished Professor of History; Indigenous and colonial past)
Baki Tezcan, University of California, Davis (professor; premodern Middle East, early modern Ottoman sociopolitical, early modern transformation of Islam)

Nominations may also be made by petition; each petition must carry the signatures of 100 or more members of the Association in good standing and indicate the particular vacancy for which the nomination is intended. Nominations by petition must be in the hands of the Nominating Committee on or before April 1 and should be sent to committees@historians.org. All nominations must be accompanied by certification of willingness of the nominee to serve if elected. The Nominating Committee will review the petitions to ensure that the candidates meet the criteria outlined in the Statement on Diversity in AHA Nominations and Appointments and the Nominating Committee Guidelines. Candidates not meeting the criteria shall be disqualified from standing for election.