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History

Archives Research Fellowships Available

In 2026, there are two opportunities to receive funding to use the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections (NUASC) records to aid research and storytelling.

A person sitting at a table in the Snell Library Archives Reading Room flips through files in an archival box. More boxes are in the background.

The New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC) fellowships provides support for research projects that span across several New England repositories. NERFC is a collaboration of 30 cultural institutions and repositories across New England, including NUASC. The consortium’s fellowship program is designed to promote research across a variety of institutions and metropolitan areas in New England. NERFC grants two dozen awards every year and fellows receive a stipend of $5,000 with the requirement that they conduct their research in at least three of the participating institutions for periods of two weeks each. Applications are due Sunday, February 1, 2026, and can be submitted through NERFC’s homepage on the Massachusetts Historical Society website. Note that there are new adjustments to the NERFC submission process, including contacting an archivist directly to learn more about their collections prior to submitting an application.

The Boston Public Library (BPL) is offering a new fellowship in collaboration with NUASC this year. The “Telling Boston Stories Fellowship” is a four-week program intended to support research projects that focus on the people and communities of Boston that are often left out of the historical narrative. This fellowship can support many types of projects both academic and artistic. Fellows will receive a $4,500 stipend and will be expected to spend four weeks working with collections, primarily at the BPL and Northeastern University, though trips at other Boston cultural heritage institutions or research centers may be included. The weeks do not have to be consecutive. Applications are due Monday, March 23, 2026. To apply, visit the BPL’s fellowship page for more information.

For any questions about this fellowships, using our collections, or what other types of collaborations and research projects are possible, email Molly Brown at mo.brown@northeastern.edu.

The HistoryMakers Digital Archive: An Essential Resource for African-American History

Looking for a primary source for an essay or digital project? Do you want to know more about, say, the Montgomery Bus Boycott from someone who lived through it? Or are you just bored and looking for something educational to watch? Well, dear reader, have I got the archive for you.

I’d like to present to you the HistoryMakers Digital Archive, a video collection of oral history interviews that is available to all Northeastern students, faculty, and staff. With a focus on African-American history, the Digital Archive is a resource that can be both useful and fascinating to everyone in academia, even if they’re not studying history.

A collage of notable African Americans surrounding the HistoryMakers logo

So, what is oral history? It’s certainly not the history of public speaking or how humans dealt with cavities, nor is it simply anecdotes passed by word of mouth. The Oral History Association defines it as “a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events.” Besides being the oldest form of history-gathering, oral history holds special significance to African Americans and other groups of the African diaspora: Not only do many African peoples have long, storied traditions—perhaps most famously, that of the West African griot—that venerate the keepers of oral history as professionals who are just as vital to the community as the soldier or the healer. Further, due to historical laws that either made it illegal or difficult for African Americans to be taught how to read and write, oral history has been one of the crucial ways that we can learn about certain events and periods. For example, during the Great Depression, the U.S. government commissioned a collection of oral history interviews from formerly enslaved people across 17 states. The collection of transcribed interviews, which is available online, is an incredibly valuable resource in broadening your understanding of the experiences of Black people during slavery.

The HistoryMakers Digital Archive follows in this honorable tradition. It compiles oral history interviews with nearly 2,700 historically significant Americans of African descent, designated as “HistoryMakers.” They’re significant for a variety of reasons, but all have made some notable contribution to the fields of medicine, art, music, politics, technology, science, literature, journalism, and more.

The archive includes interviews that provide insight into the lives and deeds of some of the most well-known people in the world—John Lewis, Whoopi Goldberg, Angela Davis, Harry Belafonte, Barack Obama—as well as many other fascinating folks worth learning about who you might not have known about. For instance, there’s Elma Lewis, a Roxbury native who founded her own art school here in Boston. There’s Ed Bullins, a noted playwright and former professor at Northeastern. And then there’s Sylvester Monroe, a journalist who recounts the perils he faced while covering the desegregation of schools in Boston. Heck, I even found an interview from William Ward, the former mayor of my hometown of Chesapeake, Virginia. And that’s just scratching the surface. You can watch interviews from literally thousands of HistoryMakers, each of which offer their own take on their fields, their lives, and the historical events that shaped them.

Part of the beauty of the Digital Archive is how simple it is to use: after spending just a handful of minutes on the website, you’ll more than likely get the hang of it. But if you’d like a step-by-step guide on how to access, navigate, and utilize it, I’ve created a LibGuide that will hopefully be helpful.

In addition, HistoryMakers is hosting a contest in honor of Black History Month. Learn more and sign up here.

Have any further questions about the Digital Archive? You can contact me directly at moyler.h@northeastern.edu or send a note attached to a carrier pigeon to [redacted] Street in Mission Hill.

New: African Newspapers, 1800-1922

Northeastern University Libraries now provides access to over 40 historical newspapers from throughout Africa. Key titles include the East African Standard, Baira Post, and Cape Town Gazette. Newspaper languages include English, French, German, Sotho, and others.

This online, fully searchable collection supports the World History Program, as well as other key programs at the university. Additional resources can be found on the History Subject Guide.

History Through Biography

Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn 

The award winning American National Biography Online and Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (for British history) are now available through NU Libraries. Within these resources, you are able to search by person, subject, date, or location. For example, you can find major artists who lived in Massachusetts in the late 1800s. Results include lengthy biographical entries and links to related people and themes. The American National Biography Online includes the Oxford Companion to United States History so that you can quickly link from a noted figure to article on topics related to that figure.

For more on the Library’s resources in History, please see the Subject Guide.

On This Day: January 21

On this day in history, the great author George Orwell died in London. Perhaps best known for his dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell was a proponent of social justice in his time. Today we read his books and take from them the lessons of equality, freedom, and justice that were being expressed in the 1940s. The library has a great collection of books, videos, e-books, and more that you can find here, or by searching for George Orwell on NUCat. Take some time out to read or re-read some of the 20th century’s finest literary works!