Louise Mirrer

Louise Mirrer joined the New-York Historical Society as President & CEO in June 2004. Under her leadership, the institution has reinvigorated its commitment to greater public understanding of history and its relevance today, the support and encouragement of historical scholarship, and the education of young people. Mirrer holds a double Ph.D. from Stanford, a graduate Diploma from Cambridge, and a BA magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. She is also an Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

During her tenure, the New-York Historical Society has launched groundbreaking exhibitions such as Slavery in New York, Nueva York, Chinese American: Inclusion/Exclusion, The Vietnam War 1945-1975, and Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow. Dr. Mirrer oversaw a $100 million capital campaign completed in 2011, and the inauguration of the first-ever Center for Women’s History within an American museum in 2017. She has also initiated special projects on Citizenship and the Presidency, and has overseen the expansion of the institution’s visitorship to nearly 500,000 annually.

Dr. Mirrer’s research focuses on historical narrative and she has authored four books and numerous articles. Her most recent book is Women, Muslims, and Jews in the Texts of Reconquest Castile, published by the University of Michigan Press. She has been a professor at Fordham University, University of California-Los Angeles, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and the CUNY Graduate Center, where she continues to hold a faculty appointment. As Vice Provost for Arts, Sciences and Engineering at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, she oversaw key initiatives in liberal arts education. As Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the City University of New York, she designed the CUNY Honors College, introduced American history as a graduation requirement for all 200,000 undergraduate students, and established a major hiring initiative to increase the number of American history faculty throughout the CUNY system.