M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska will be joining the Public History & Outreach research group as a visiting research fellow from 1 June to 31 July 2025.
M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska is Associate Professor of History and Associate Director of the Graduate Program in Public History at American University, where she researches and teaches on historiography, public history theory and method, the history of museums, and local history. She is the author of History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s, (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), as well as numerous scholarly articles and more public-facing pieces in Washington History, the Washington Post and the Inclusive Historian’s Handbook. She is currently working on two new book projects—the first about the history of visitors and newcomers to Washington entitled Your Nation’s Capital: How Visitors Made Washington D.C., and Vice Versa. She is also completing a shorter monograph tentatively called How We Do History Now.
Rymsza-Pawlowska is also an active public historian who is a Us@250 Fellow at New America. In 2023-4, she was Scholar in Residence at the Heurich House Museum, and fellow at the Humanities Truck, where she created the public program and installation “Visitor: Information?” Her work includes serving on the editorial board of Washington History Magazine, as well as advisory boards for the DC History Center, the Humanities Truck, and the University of Wrocław’s Public History Summer School. She is currently on the Board of Directors of Humanities DC, and serves as series editor for the National Park Service and National Council on Public History’s 2021-2025 American Revolution 250th Commemoration Scholars’ Forums. Rymsza-Pawlowska earned a doctorate in American Studies from Brown University, as well as M.A. degrees from Brown in Public Humanities and Georgetown University in Communication, Culture, and Technology.
At the C²DH, Rymsza-Pawlowska will be completing a new book called How We Do History Now, which documents, explains, and theorizes the myriad ways that American publics are collecting, researching, interpreting, and revising the past. The book advocates for new professional approaches in public-facing and public history to help meet and engage this significant shift.