The Reid Public History Institute researches, interprets, and presents the history of Las Vegas, Southern Nevada, and the Intermountain West. Built upon two decades of award-winning scholarship and research initiatives at UNLV, our institute is named for the late Senator Harry Reid, whose lifelong advocacy for historic and environmental preservation remains at the heart of our mission.

Institute faculty are experts on societies and cultures in our own backyard and around the world, spanning time periods from yesterday to time immemorial. We use scholarship and experiential learning to explore the relationships between the built environment, cultural change, and public lands. By uniting research in environmental history, Western history, historic preservation, and public history, we support stewardship, preservation, and education in the intermountain West.

We teach and practice diverse methodologies — digital history; museum and archival studies; oral history; and the preservation of historic sites and landscapes. Our collaborators range from federal land management agencies to casino owners, culinary union workers, exhibition designers, and headliners on The Strip. Our students are active partners in Institute initiatives, completing research and fieldwork as part of their larger graduate program. Collectively, we work beyond the confines of traditional historical inquiry and application to achieve our core values of collaboration, partnership, stewardship, preservation, and education.

The faculty, students, and collaborators of the Reid Public History Institute share a common goal: to analyze, interpret, and preserve history for the benefit of the people who make it and live it.