For 2026: A Five-Year Conference Series

For 2026: Wartime Transformations

October 23-25, 2026

Call for Proposals due April 15, 2025

Hosted by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Omohundro Institute of Vast Early American History & Culture, and William & Mary

Violence ignited by the American Revolution transformed millions of lives across the world. The eight-year War for Independence sparked when Anglo-American colonists rebelled against the British Empire expanded to include Native nations and European powers far beyond the United Colonies. The Revolution also brought increased imperial competition, urban riots, agrarian rebellions, economic dislocation, epidemic disease, Native-settler violence, and campaigns of repression against the enslaved that spanned decades and sprawled far beyond British North America. These conflicts shaped the revolutionary experiences not just for those who fought in them but also for their families and communities, encompassing men, women, and children across the Atlantic World. Many of those who participated, such as the thousands of Native and Black people who fought on all sides, had very different motives for taking up arms than either the revolutionaries or the British government, but their involvement had profound consequences for the post-revolutionary world. In addition to the tens of thousands of soldiers who died or suffered serious injury in battle, incessant warfare devastated farms and cities, divided families and communities, forced migrations, challenged ideas of gender relations, and exacerbated ethnic hatreds, especially between settlers and Natives. In addition to winning independence for the United States, these conflicts left lasting psychological traumas on individuals, triggered long-lasting economic shifts, and cemented racialized fear and hatred that lasted for centuries.

“Wartime Transformations” seeks to bring into conversation scholarly and public-facing research exploring the far-reaching effects of war during the American Revolution. The program committee invites proposals for panels, roundtables, workshops, and individual papers focusing on any aspect of conflict – broadly conceived – linked to the Revolution. The scope of the conference is not limited to North America nor the Anglophone Atlantic, and the organizers hope to assemble a program that represents the width and breadth of vast early America. The program committee especially encourages proposals that have the potential to spark conversations that can continue through next year’s “For 2026” conference, which will explore the early United States and the post-Revolutionary Atlantic World.

For the full call for proposals or to submit, please click here.

The conference will take place October 23-25, 2025, at the William & Mary School of Education and at Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Daytime programs will take place on the campus of William & Mary and throughout the Historic Area of Colonial Williamsburg. Friday, October 24, the evening plenary will take place at the Hennage Auditorium, in the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, and Saturday, October 25, the evening plenary will take place on the campus of William & Mary. Registration information will be available summer 2025.

K12 teachers and museum educators: Interested in applying for the RevEd conference taking place during the “For 2026” conference? Read more here.

Marking the 250th Anniversary of American Independence

Hosted By The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, And William & Mary

In 2026 the United States of America will mark the 250th anniversary of independence. This is an unparalleled opportunity for exploring and reflecting upon the American past, the foundation of the nation, and its legacy into the present. Complex, inspiring, and often violent, this period informs our experience as Americans today. The better we understand that past, the better we are equipped to understand ourselves, address the challenges we face, and seize opportunities for the future.

Colonial Williamsburg, the Omohundro Institute, and William & Mary are joining together to host a series of five annual conferences to spotlight emerging research, connect a diverse public to scholars and research, and convene significant conversations about how and why understanding the early American past is especially meaningful today. The first of these conferences, “For 2026: Revolutionary Legacies,” took place October 28–30, 2022.

About the “For 2026” Conference Initiative

Colonial Williamsburg is the world’s largest living history museum, dedicated to its mission that the future may learn from the past through its expert and distinctive events, collections, programs, and site interpretation. The Omohundro Institute is the leading hub for inquiry into early American history, broadly understood as all points in the Atlantic World between roughly 1450 and 1820, and supports and publishes the leading research into this expansive Early America. William & Mary is the top-ranked university in the nation for its early American history offerings, and a leader in integrated diversity, equity, and inclusion programming and creating opportunities for civic discourse. Together, our three institutions are committed to serving the public good through historical education and research and outreach to the community, the region, the nation, and beyond. This mission has never been more resonant, or more relevant.

The series of annual conferences leading to 2026 builds on our exceptional legacy of convening scholarly discussions, educating a broad range of learners, fostering community engagement, and connecting the public to expert historical interpretation through events and programs. Each installment features a broadly comparative exploration of a theme central to the era of the American Revolution; in addition, sessions exploring all aspects of Vast Early America are welcomed on the program. The CW-OI-W&M conference series is committed to an expansive, inclusive history of early America that accounts for the diversity of people and experiences of the period. The themes of the conferences are designed to facilitate this commitment and amplify significant new knowledge about this essential period.

All five conferences feature a four-module structure incorporating both public facing and scholarly conversations:

• Researcher–to-researcher panels and workshops throughout each day to allow presenters to share their work and benefit from expert peer feedback. These include sessions on the American Revolution as well as sessions on other aspects of Vast Early America.
• Public audience plus researcher events that introduce diverse publics to cutting-edge research. Formats might include scholar roundtables with question-and-answer periods; scholarly presentations of familiar and understudied primary sources from the period; landmark lectures or interviews with award-winning scholars, museum professionals and leaders in this arena.
• Site visits that introduce participants to the Commonwealth’s local and regional resources. In addition to showcasing Virginia’s centrality in the founding of our nation, we leverage these sites to explore questions of evidence and methodology; themes of freedom, democracy and belonging; and strategies for engaging historic sites, collections, exhibitions and resources in academic and public learning and programming.
• Workshops focused on how museums and other public history sites can incorporate new research, featuring both scholars who presented research at the conference and public history experts and practitioners.
  
  

"For 2026:Virginia’s Revolutionary Histories & Beyond"
October 24 – 26, 2024

The American Revolution of 1776-1783 implicated Virginia and Virginians in distinctive ways. From the proclamation by former Virginia royal governor Lord Dunmore encouraging enslaved people to join the British and resist the American patriots to the final decisive battle at Yorktown, to the first presidents, Virginia played a pivotal role in the struggle for American independence and the founding of a new nation. Some 200 years later, scholars, curators, interpreters, and educators are transforming our understanding of Virginia in the long eighteenth century, casting new light on the political, intellectual, and social contexts of change in the Old Dominion and the larger Atlantic World.

“For 2026: Contested Freedoms”
October 26-28, 2023

If the American Revolution inaugurated new ways of speaking and thinking about freedom, it also took place in and helped to create a world marked by multiple forms of unfreedom. Within the European-dominated colonies, nations, and empires of early America, slavery and subjugation as well as distinct economic and political constraints curtailed its rhetoric of universal rights. Indigenous polities, too, sought to exercise their own ideas about freedom and unfreedom, while African-descended people struggled to enact projects of liberation and belonging. The contests between and within these groups throughout the Atlantic world were powerfully shaped by the efforts of individuals, communities, colonies, and nations to grapple with the opportunities and challenges of freedom and servitude in an Age of Revolution.  The United States’ own contest for and over freedom both emerged in this context and reshaped it in ways that we continue to debate today.  Those debates require engaging with early America’s contested freedoms.

“For 2026: Revolutionary Legacies”
October 28-29, 2022

The public portion of last year’s event included a series of panel discussions, as well as a keynote address by Annette Gordon-Reed, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University and the winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for History and the 2008 National Book Award as well as over a dozen other major book prizes.

Among last year’s programs was a discussion of how the way we commemorate our history has been revolutionized. Scheduled panelists included Christy Coleman, formerly Colonial Williamsburg’s director of interpretive programs development and currently executive director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation; Ed Ayers, president emeritus of the University of Richmond and one of the founding co-hosts of the history podcast Backstory; and State Senate Minority Leader Thomas Norment. Barbara Hamm Lee, best known as the executive producer and host of WHRO’s Another View, who moderated the panel.

Other panels discussed how research on African American, Indigenous Peoples and LGBTQ+ histories has evolved and how it has been incorporated into public programs. Select sessions were part of the Slate Seminar, supported by the William & Mary Bray School Lab and the Mellon Foundation.