Will Tchakirides

Dr. Will Tchakirides is a public humanities professional specializing in digital storytelling, collections research, and community archiving. Trained as a public historian, he is experienced in oral history project development, as well as online museum curation and archival records management.

Will has collaborated on national and local initiatives that have helped museums and organizations build more usable, complete interpretations of the past on their own terms. He is currently a researcher and content developer with the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum.

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Will is also a historian of U.S. policing, with research exploring how Midwestern cities and invested publics have made and re-made police power in the 20th century, and what that’s meant for policed people.

He is writing a book that examines how police establish and reinforce legitimacy through institutional memory work. The monograph focuses on Milwaukee’s influential brand of “reform era” policing and the role that narrative has played in making and sustaining police power.

The book aims to help readers understand how police agencies constitute and re-affirm their authority, and what targeted communities have done — and can do now — to challenge that process.

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