History Alum Scott Heerman New Editor of Books

History Alum in New Position at Omohundro Institute

Scott Heerman (PhD 2013 Advisor Ira Berlin) is the new Editor of Books at the Omohundro Institute and Associate Professor in the Department of History at William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA effective August 10, 2025. Heerman will join the OI Books team working on acquisitions and substantive editing. His appointment inaugurates a newly created faculty position, made possible by collaboration between the OI and William & Mary senior leadership.

Heerman is a dynamic scholar of slavery and emancipation in transimperial contexts. He is the author of The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country, 1730–1865 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). His current project, Freedom’s Ensemble: Abduction and Belonging in the Age of Atlantic Emancipations, 1750–1860, which looks at Black kidnapping in the hemispheric Caribbean from the Age of Revolutions through the mid-nineteenth century, is under contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press. He is the author of articles that have appeared or are forthcoming in the Journal of American History and William and Mary Quarterly, among others. He has received a number of grants and fellowships including from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Huntington Library, the Newberry Library, and the American Historical Association.