Divisional Dean for the Social Sciences

Professor of History, Spatial Sciences and Environmental Studies

(213) 740-1657
deverell@usc.edu

As the divisional dean for the social sciences, William Deverell helps coordinate strategic planning in research and faculty recruitment and retention across social science departments and programs. He is an American historian with a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth century American West and has appointments in the USC Dornsife Van Hunnick Department of History; Spatial Sciences Institute; and Environmental Studies Program. He has written works on political, social, ethnic, and environmental history. He is the founding director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West (please see the Institute’s website for more information: website (www.usc.edu/icw). He is one of founding directors of the Los Angeles Service Academy, a high school outreach initiative that teaches high school students about the infrastructural networks of Southern California (LAServiceAcademy.org). He also directs the USC Libraries Collections Convergence Initiative. His graduate students at USC work on a variety of topics on the history of the West, ranging from the region’s racial and ethnic history, to the rise of conservative politics in the Southwest, and the western U.S. connections to and across the Pacific Rim. Current projects include the Chinatown History Project and the West on Fire Initiative.