Dr. Robert Townsend

After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history at The Catholic University of America, Rob converted experiences as an editor on the Tower and database skills developed in Dr. Larry Poos’s quantitative history course (at CUA) into an editorial job at the American Historical Association. Over the next 24 years, he edited the AHA’s magazine (Perspectives on History), built the organization’s online presence, and wrote dozens of articles about various aspects of the history discipline. Realizing that he needed a doctoral degree to advance in an academic-adjacent organization, he returned to graduate studies in 2001 and finished a PhD in 2009 at George Mason University. 

In 2013, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences recruited him to manage their Washington, D.C. office and develop the Humanities Indicators initiative (humanitiesindicators.org), which reports on the health of the field from a historical and social scientific perspective. In 2020, he was promoted to direct all humanities, arts, and culture programs at the Academy, including a recent commission on the value of the arts and a new project on cultural institutions and their communities.