The Newberry Library is pleased to announce the appointment of Rose Miron as its next Vice President for Research and Education. In this role, Miron will direct the Newberry’s fellowships, research centers, and teacher and undergraduate programs.
Miron has been at the Newberry since 2019, serving as the Director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies. Beginning in 2020, she led a three-year planning initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation to evaluate existing library protocols and forge new partnerships with Indigenous nations. In collaboration with staff across the library, the project resulted in a three-year strategic plan for Indigenous initiatives, a new Culturally Sensitive Materials Policy, the first application of TK (Traditional Knowledge) labels and corrective cataloging in the collection, and a framework for future partnerships with tribal nations. Miron also co-directed Indigenous Chicago, a multifaceted public humanities project launched this September that involved five years of planning and extensive collaboration with local Native communities and nearly a dozen tribal nations. Miron also has significantly increased participation in the Newberry Consortium in American Indian and Indigenous Studies and advised dozens of external organizations on best practices related to Native history.
“We are delighted that Rose will be our next Vice President of Research and Education,” said Astrida Orle Tantillo, the Newberry’s President and Librarian. “Rose has distinguished herself while in the McNickle Center, leading several major initiatives and building reciprocal relationships with researchers, Native community members, and tribal nations with historic ties to the Chicago region and beyond.”
Outside of the Newberry, Miron serves as Adjunct/Affiliate Faculty in the History Department and the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern University. Her first book, Indigenous Archival Activism: Mohican Interventions in Public History and Memory (2024), takes readers into the heart of the debate over who has the right to represent Native history by tracing one tribe’s fifty-year fight to recover their historical materials from colonial museums and archives and rewrite their history in public spaces.
Miron holds a BA in History and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. A non-Native historian, her research explores Indigenous history across the Great Lakes, especially related to public history and memory.
Samantha Majhor (Dakota and Assiniboine, Fort Peck Descendant) will serve as the Interim Director of the McNickle Center. Majhor is an Assistant Professor of English at Marquette University whose research focuses on Native American literature. Majhor holds a PhD in English from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, an MA in English from the University of St. Thomas, and a BA in English and Sociology from the University of Minnesota-Duluth.