Public History and Participation

Abstract In this article, we present the field of public history, which we define as a process of making history more accessible, participatory, and connected to present-day public engagement with the past. In particular, we discuss how public history invites and develops interdisciplinary collaboration, such as between history and art. We also present the reasons, the practices, and the challenges of co-producing historical projects with non-professional members of the public. As a new paradigm, public history questions and reinvents the role of professional historians who share authority with other actors of the history-making process. We flesh out our arguments with examples from recent public history projects we developed in Luxembourg in 2024.