Collaboration across Disciplines: History for the Public Good

This paper explores the partnering of historians and social scientists in research consortiums in order to bring history to bear on the present. Too often historians and scholars work in isolation, protecting the data sources they found or created to be able to publish, earn tenure and be promoted. The Upstate New York Policing Research Consortium (UNY-PRC) takes a different approach. Drawing on the interdisciplinary and collaborative work of scholars such as Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard, we conduct research, build data archives and make our sources and findings available to other scholars and the public. Our goal is to advance the study of policing in upstate New York in order to better serve upstate New York communities. By sharing archival materials and data, and discussing historical trends with the public, we are able to maximize our historical reach and better demonstrate the historical and structural forces at play across time and space. As the consortium has coalesced this past year, we have begun to create relationships with comparable consortiums across the globe, most recently with Sheffield Hallam University in Sheffield, England. Thus, this paper illuminates the process we have followed and how the study and practice of history within interdisciplinary and collaborative consortiums can better inform modern societal questions.