I’m Nicole Hemmer, a writer and historian living in New York City. Since earning my Ph.D. from Columbia in 2010, I’ve been working on ways to bring historical insight to contemporary conversations. That work means I have worn a lot of hats: professor, presidential historian, podcaster, producer, talking-head, freelancer, editor at the Washington Post, and columnist for places like Vox and U.S. News & World Report.

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My work has taken me all over the world, from Sydney to Miami to Virginia to Manhattan (all places far, far away from the rural diocese in Indiana where I grew up, in more ways than one). Right now, I’m an associate research scholar at Columbia University, where I work on the Obama Presidency Oral History Project. It’s a pretty cool gig — you can read more here.

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You can explore this site to learn more about the projects I’m working on. Feel free to get in touch via email (smash that “mail” icon up top) or over on Twitter, where I spend way too much time. In my defense, I write about politics and media, and like it or not, Twitter is where a good deal of both are happening right now. Also it’s fun, when it’s not awful.

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And if you’ve read this far, here’s the real “about me”: I’ve mainlined all seven seasons of Parks & Rec more times than I can count, and I’ve never identified with a character more than Leslie Knope, warts and all (though I’m way tidier and don’t know all the words to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song).