Margaret Burnham

Margaret Burnham has served as a state court judge (appointed by Governor Michael Dukakis, 1977), civil rights lawyer, and human rights commissioner. A graduate of Tougaloo College in Jackson, MS and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, she has been on the Northeastern University faculty since 2002. She was named to the 2016 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows, an honor recognizing a select group of scholars for their significant work in the social sciences and humanities. Professor Burnham views her work as part of a global reconceptualization that seeks to historicize personal memory by connecting citizens to the past in ways that inform the ongoing conversation about the present. In this democratizing project to create an inclusive and authentic national history, the distinctive role of researchers is to provide accurate accounts of past events. If well carried out, the work should clarify events and experiences, yield new readings of the past, and alter understandings about present imperatives.