In recent years, historians around the country have experimented with a new approach to pedagogy and collaborative research: the history lab. History labs offer undergraduate students a variety of benefits: they create a physical and metaphorical space for the study of the past, enable students to investigate pressing historical questions, train undergraduates in a variety of soft skills, build a sense of intellectual community among researchers, and allow students to take advantage of cutting-edge methods from public history and the digital humanities. Based loosely on approaches from the lab sciences, history labs have the potential to capture students’ imagination at a time when many departments are worried about history enrollments.

This panel will feature three presentations by historians who have led history labs. Joshua Birk from Smith College will discuss his work organizing a medieval history lab, whose students train each other in a variety of methods while producing an undergraduate history journal and working on several ongoing research projects. Elizabeth Hyde and Jonathan Mercantini of Kean University will make a presentation based on their NEH-funded history lab on the life and times of New Jersey’s first governor, William Livingston; students do research on Livingston’s estate and in the university archives to produce websites, podcasts, elementary-school lesson plans, and traditional research papers. Renee Romano of Oberlin College will discuss her college’s History Design Lab, in which learn to do innovative research, master new digital techniques, and hone their skills at communicating historical insights to the broader public.

Together, these presentations will highlight a model of pedagogy and collaborative research likely to capture the imagination of undergraduate students, discussing both the challenges and the opportunities inherent in the model.