Sam Wineburg

Sam Wineburg is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and, by courtesy, of History at Stanford University. Educated at Brown and Berkeley, he holds a PhD in Psychological Studies in Education from Stanford and an honorary doctorate from Sweden’s Umeå University. Wineburg studies how young people make judgments about what to believe in modern society, and his scholarship sits at the crossroads of three fields: cognitive science, history, and education. His work has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Time Magazine, Die Zeit, and interviews have aired with him on NPR and the BBC. His articles have appeared in outlets as diverse as Journal of American History, Cognitive Science, Smithsonian Magazine, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. His 2002 book, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts was awarded the Frederic W. Ness Prize from the Association of American Colleges and Universities for the most important contribution to the “improvement of Liberal Education and understanding the Liberal Arts.” From 2007-2009 he co-directed the US Department of Education’s National Clearinghouse for History Education. In 2014, he was named the Obama-Nehru Distinguished Chair by the US-India Fulbright Commission. His latest book, Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone) was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2018.