Sam Wineburg

Sam Wineburg is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and, by courtesy, of History, Emeritus, 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 people determine what to believe online, and his scholarship sits at the crossroads of three fields: cognitive science, history, and communication studies. 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, Slate, 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 forthcoming book, with co-author Mike Caulfield, is titled, “A Citizen’s Guide to the Internet: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less Often, and Make Better Choices about What to Believe Online” (University of Chicago Press, 2023)