Will Tchakirides

A little about myself…

I’m a historian who writes about how the state, law enforcement, and invested citizens have made and remade police power in cities over the course of the 20th century. My research explores how middle- and working-class African Americans, as well as Black youth and the poor have challenged police violence and reimagined community safety free of police coercion and neglect.

I’m also a public historian with a decade of digital humanities, archives, and oral history experience. I’ve worked on collaborative projects for universities and museums in cities as regionally diverse as Boston, Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee. Projects I’ve assisted on have helped communities and organizations build more usable, complete interpretations of the past on their own terms.

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My dissertation examines the origins and maintenance of police power in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, centering Black-led struggles for accountability across the city’s civil rights movement history.