Exploring the History of Policing & Confrontations with Police Power
researcher & writer · public historian · engaged scholar
Dr. Will Tchakirides is a historian who writes about how the state and invested publics have made and re-made police power in the 20th century US. His research explores the political and cultural foundations of police legitimacy in the Midwest, as well as how Black Americans, Latinx and white accomplices on the Left have challenged state violence and built more self-determined community safety structures.
Will is also a public historian with a decade of digital humanities, archives, and oral history experience. He has collaborated on projects that have helped both organizations and communities build more usable and complete interpretations of the past on their own terms. Will currently assists on the Smithsonian Institution’s new initiative to combat racism in America: Our Shared Future: Reckoning with our Racial Past.
