Jamin Wells is an Associate Professor and Director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program. A graduate of the Hagley Program in the History of Capitalism, Technology, and Culture at the University of Delaware, he has led grant-funded digital history initiatives and community-engaged public history projects, including an oral history project that led to the publication of A Punkhouse in the Deep South: The Oral History of 309 (UPF, 2021).
Wells’s first book, Shipwrecked: Coastal Disasters and the Making of the American Beach (UNC Press, 2020), won the John Lyman Book Award in U.S. Maritime History. It examines the radical transformation of the American coast during the nineteenth century, arguing that coastal shipwrecks played a pivotal role in changing how Americans viewed, used, and inhabited the shoreline. Committed to collaborative interdisciplinary research, he has co-authored peer-reviewed studies that bring novel historical perspectives and methods to cemetery studies, policing research, and cumulative impact assessments. He was the recipient of several teaching, research, and service awards at his previous institution.
Wells’s current book project explores the intersection of memory, history, and power in Pensacola, Florida, over the last two centuries. It tells the surprising story — and far-ranging impacts — of the two-century fight over the past in “America’s First Settlement.” He is also co-editor of the award-winning public history project, Righting the Past, which is under review for publication as an edited volume. He currently chairs the Florida State Historical Marker Council.
At UF, Dr. Wells offers courses in oral and public history.