Patricia Limerick

Patricia Limerick is the Faculty Director and Chair of the Board of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she is also a Professor of History. Professor Limerick has dedicated her career to bridging the gap between academics and the general public and to demonstrating the benefits of applying historical perspective to contemporary dilemmas and conflicts. In January 2016, she became the Colorado State Historian and was appointed to the National Endowment for the Humanities advisory board, the National Council on the Humanities. Her publications include Desert Passages; The Legacy of Conquest; A Ditch in Time: The City, the West, and Water; and Something in the Soil. Professor Limerick was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and the Hazel Barnes Prize, the University of Colorado’s highest award for teaching and research. She served as President of the Organization of American Historians, the American Studies Association, the Western History Association, and the Society of American Historians, and as the Vice President of the Teaching Division of the American Historical Association. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.