The AHA is pleased to welcome four new staff members: Tammy Hancock as senior accountant, Lizzy Meggyesy as research and publications assistant, Sarah Muncy as managing editor of the American Historical Review, and Jake Purcell as meetings and events associate.

Tammy Hancock

Tammy Hancock joins the AHA with two decades of experience managing accounting operations for nonprofit organizations. She holds an MS in accounting from Strayer University and a BS in business administration with a concentration in accounting from Bowie State University

Tammy enjoys learning about history and is pleased to contribute her accounting skills to the AHA. She has enjoyed collecting family stories so much that she has “reluctantly become the family historian.” In her free time, she is building her family tree using US Census records from the 1950s.

Lizzy Meggyesy joins the AHA fresh from completing her MA in history at Tulane University, where she also earned dual undergraduate degrees in political science and history with a minor in art history. Her passion for history was nurtured early on thanks to her teachers. “In the fifth grade, I had an amazing social studies teacher that had a knack for storytelling that initially made me love history.”

Lizzy Meggyesy

Studying history gave Lizzy great solace and furthered her view of its importance in understanding the world around her.

Subsequent coursework in European history cemented her enthusiasm for the whole discipline. Lizzy matriculated at Tulane at a time of political soul-searching across the United States, and finished her MA in the midst of the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic. In these difficult times, she says, “studying history gave me great solace and furthered my view of the importance of history in understanding the world around me.” This led her directly to an interest in contributing to public history and working at the AHA. After graduation, she “really wanted to stay in the field of history however I could.”

When Lizzy is not at work, you might find her scouring thrift shops for cool finds. She enjoys “collecting different knickknacks to curate my space at home.” She is an avid moviegoer and loves to keep up with the latest trends in popular culture. As a transplant from New Orleans, she is excited to continue her political activism here in DC.

Sarah Muncy hails from Dallas, Texas, and her career journey has taken her from academia to publishing. After earning her MA in history from the University of Cincinnati, she joined the University of Cincinnati Press, where she acquired extensive industry experience.

Sarah Muncy

Sarah became interested in history as a high school student because she found that history was unique in allowing her to embrace her intellectual curiosity. “I had a lot of questions [about the world],” she says. “History was a discipline that embraced, encouraged, and fed that inquisitiveness and gave me a place to land as I investigated those ideas and inquiries.” Sarah credits her undergraduate adviser at Texas Tech University, Aliza Wong, for expanding her career horizons to embrace the intersection of historical research and publishing.

Sarah is thrilled to join the AHA because of the opportunities to collaborate with historians daily, in “an environment where historical work [is] at the root.” She is excited to manage the AHR in particular: “As a publishing professional, working for the journal of record for the history discipline is an amazing opportunity.”

When Sarah is not at work, you might find her attending a live musical, crafting artwork from recycled books, or reading a historical science fiction novel. An avid reader, she is now enjoying her newfound audiobook time while on the DC Metro.

History offered a tantalizing glimpse into a world of universities, choirs, churches, and politics that felt as familiar as it felt strange.

Jake Purcell

Jake Purcell intended to major in music performance at Oberlin, but it was the muse Clio, not Euterpe, who had her own plans. Thanks to a required music history survey course, he discovered an unexpected passion for the past. “When the medieval unit rolled around, I was hooked,” he says. History offered a tantalizing glimpse into a world of universities, choirs, churches, and politics that felt as familiar as it felt strange. It did not take long for him to declare history as a second major.

Jake became interested in working at the AHA thanks to the organization’s professional values, which he absorbed while coordinating an AHA Career Diversity pilot program in 2015–16. “I started to appreciate the AHA’s ecumenical sense of what counts as historical work and who counts as a historian.”

In his free time, Jake enjoys biking around DC or trying out a new recipe at home. “I cook a ton,” he says. He is also an avid DIY-er. As a recent transplant to DC, Jake welcomes “any and all DMV-area recs.”

Together, Tammy, Lizzy, Sarah, and Jake bring a wealth of collective expertise and life experiences to the AHA. Please extend a warm welcome to them!