History professor Margaret O'Mara has been selected by the American Council of Learned Societies to be a Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellow next year. As a Burkhardt Fellow, Professor O'Mara will spend the 2014-2015 academic year in residence at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where she will work on her project, "Silicon Age: High Technology and the Reinvention of the United States, 1970-2000" (abstract). O'Mara is an Associate Professor of History, specializing in American political history, urban history, and the history of capitalism and is the Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of History. She is the author of Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
Burkhardt Fellowships are "targeted interventions in the careers of exceptionally talented scholars." Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the program supports scholars who are embarking on ambitious, large-scale research projects at critical stages in their academic careers. According to ACLS Program Officer Matthew Goldfeder, the year Burkhardt Fellows spend in residence at one of 13 national participating residential research centers allows them the opportunity to "engage in an extended exchange with other scholars from a variety of fields and backgrounds" and to "deepen and expand the significance of their research and its impact on the humanities and related social sciences."
The Department of History congratulates Margaret O'Mara on this prestigious and well-deserved research opportunity!