Laura Anderson brings significant public history, museum, and nonprofit experience to her role at the Alabama Humanities Alliance. She is a graduate of the Seminar for Historical Administration, Getty NextGen Leadership Institute, and Jekyll Island Management Institute. She served as president of the Society of Alabama Archivists, a term on the national History Leadership Awards committee of the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH), and currently serves as Nominating Committee chair for the Alabama Historical Association. Before joining AHA, Laura worked as celebration and documentation coordinator for the Program for Rural Services and Research at the University of Alabama, followed by 15 years at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) in the positions of archivist, oral history project director, and director of special projects.
Laura’s publications include contributions to Museums in a Global Context: National Identity, International Understanding (AAM Press, 2013), Fostering Empathy Through Museums (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) and AASLH’s History News magazine, as well as Civil Rights in Birmingham (Arcadia, 2013), a book of photographs on behalf of BCRI.
An alumna of the University of Montevallo, Laura earned graduate degrees in American Studies from the University of Alabama and History from the University of West Georgia.