Public History is a field of practice. Many skills are best learned through experience and under the supervision of experienced professionals. Our public history students undertake a 120-hour internship (HIST 698) by participating in a substantive project at a local community organization, museum, or public institution. Internship placements are highly individualized; we work with students to determine their career goals and/or particular skills that they hope to gain in a field placement.
The Greater Boston area offers an abundance of cultural organizations and historic sites that can host and train our students, although some students have undertaken internships outside of state.
Our students have held internships at Adams National Historical Park; Baker Library, Harvard Business School; Boston Athenaeum; The Boston Museum Project; Boston National Historical Park; Boston Public Library; Boston Women’s Heritage Trail; Buttonwoods Museum; Cambridge Historical Society; Commonwealth Museum; Countway Library, Center for the History of Medicine; Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative; Facing History; Heinz History Center; Historic New England; Historic Newton; The History Project; Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center, San Francisco Public Library; The House of the Seven Gables; International Tennis Hall of Fame, Newport, RI; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; John F. Kennedy Library and Museum; Kalaupapa National Historical Park, Molokai, Hawai’i; Leventhal Map Center, Boston Public Library; Lowell National Historical Park; Lynn Museum; Maryland Historical Society; Massachusetts Historical Commission; Massachusetts Historical Society; Massachusetts General Hospital Archives; Massachusetts History Day; Mass Memories Road Show (UASC); Mount Auburn Cemetery; Museum of African American History, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) Archives; Nantucket Historical Association; National Archives at Boston, Waltham, MA; New Bedford Whaling Museum; Nichols House Museum; Old Colony History Museum; Olmsted Center for Landscape Studies; Paul Revere House; Pilgrim Memorial State Park; Plimoth Patuxet Museums; Shirley Eustis House; Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College; Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary; Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery, Watertown, MA; The Trustees of Reservations; Tsongas Industrial History Center, Lowell; USS Constitution Museum; UMass Boston, Healey Library, University Archives and Special Collections; West End Museum
Read First-Hand Accounts of UMass Boston Internships
- Internship: Abigail Adams the Entrepreneur: Developing New Interpretive Plans Based on the Limitations of Evidence
- Internship: “Include Women in the Sequel:” The Lack of Visibility of Boston’s Professional Women’s Hockey in Public History
- Internship: Planning for the Ongoing- Projects and Time in Small House Museums
- Internship: The Significance of Displaying Insignificant Histories
- Internship: An Exhibit for Local 201
- Internship: Dealing With Sensitive Histories: Contextualization, Not Erasure
- Internship: Designing for the Public
- Internship: No Such Thing as a Perfect Interview: Artists-in-Residence at Historic Sites, no. 2
- Collections and Connections: Interning at the Shirley-Eustis House
- The Significance of an Individual: Developing Exhibits in Historic House Museums
- Internship: Archives, Virtual Reality, and the Preservation of Memory
- Internship: “Ways We Couldn’t Even Imagine”: Artists-in-Residence at Historic Sites, no. 1
- Internship: A Fresh Perspective on Local History
- Internship: Cold War Cassin Young
- Going Virtual: Museum Education During COVID-19
- Presidential Predicament: Developing a Self-Guided Tour at the Adams National Historical Park
- Keg to Cannon: Adapting Education Programs from the USS Constitution Museum to USS Constitution
- Internship at Historic Newton: Putting Education into Practice
- Wheels, Genealogy, and Baby Hair: An Internship with the PEM Library
- Branding Lowell: Collaboration, Material Culture, and Community Identity at the Lowell National Historical Park
- Transparent Faces & Hidden Mothers: Processing Tintypes at Historic New England
- Alumni Spotlight: Judith Marshall
- Women of the Past & Present Shaping the Future
- Learning from the Clothes that Haverhill Wore: A Semester at the Haverhill Historical Society
- Digging Into Digital Preservation & Outreach at Boston City Archives
- Legacy in the Archives: Mayor Menino’s Office of Neighborhood Services
- The Boston 200 Collection: A Processing Experience
- Exploring Portsmouth through Craftsmen’s Eyes
- Serendipity in the Archives: Making Connections between Collections
- Weird & Wonderful: One Path to Becoming an Archivist
