天美影视传媒

Margaret O鈥橫ara

Howard & Frances Keller Endowed Professor of History

Margaret O鈥橫ara is the Howard & Frances Keller Endowed Professor of History at the 天美影视传媒 and a contributing opinion writer at聽The New York Times. She writes and teaches about the growth of the high-tech economy, the history of U.S. politics, and the connections between the two.

O’Mara is the author of聽Cities of Knowledge聽(Princeton, 2005),听Pivotal Tuesdays聽(Penn Press, 2015), and聽The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America聽(Penguin Press, 2019). She is a coauthor, with David Kennedy and Lizabeth Cohen, of forthcoming editions of a widely used United States history college textbook,聽The American Pageant聽(Cengage). In addition to her opinion pieces in聽The New York Times, her writing also has appeared in聽The Washington Post, the聽Los Angeles Times,听Newsweek,听Bloomberg Businessweek,听Foreign Policy, the聽American Prospect, and聽Pacific Standard.

At the 天美影视传媒, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in U.S. political and economic history, urban and metropolitan history, and the history of technology. She is the Washington co-chair of the Scholars Strategy Network, a co-founder and current faculty affiliate of聽Urban@UW, and a board member of HistoryLink.org, the online encyclopedia of Washington State history. In addition to her teaching, she speaks regularly to academic, civic, and business audiences.

O’Mara is a Distinguished Lecturer of the Organization of American Historians and a past fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education. She received her MA/PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and her BA from Northwestern University. Prior to her academic career, she worked in the Clinton White House and served as a contributing researcher at the Brookings Institution. She lives outside Seattle with her husband Jeff and their two daughters.