Divisional Dean for the Social Sciences

Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities
Linda and Harlan Martens Director of the Early Modern Studies Institute
Professor of History, Anthropology and Economics

(213) 821-2151
mancall@usc.edu

As divisional dean for the social sciences, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History and Anthropology Peter Mancall works with social sciences departments, centers and institutes to help them recruit and retain outstanding faculty and advance innovative research.

Mancall joined USC Dornsife’s history department in 2001, where he specializes in early modern history and the early modern Atlantic world. In 2003, he helped create the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute. As the Linda and Harlan Martens Director of the Early Modern Studies Institute, he has worked to further its mission of supporting advanced research and scholarship on human societies between 1450 and 1850. The institute has sponsored more than 1,600 scholarly talks, and it has an ongoing partnership with the Omohundro Institute/William and Mary Quarterly as well as a partnership with the University of Pennsylvania Press for its “Early Modern Americas” series, for which he is the editor. He is also the primary investigator for two current grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation: The Humanities in a Digital World and The Humanities in the University of the Future.

Mancall has held several other leadership roles at USC Dornsife: From 2016 to 2020, he served as the divisional dean for the humanities, and from 2007 to 2009 he was an associate vice provost for research advancement. In addition, Mancall has authored seven books and is an elected fellow of the Society of American Historians and the Royal Historical Society. He was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University during the 2019–20 academic year.