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Nov 5, 2026
Applied History in the US Department of State
Summary
I sat down with Lydia Sizer to chat about her experience developing applied history initiatives at the US Department of State’s Office of the Historian. We talked about what it’s like to collaborate with policymakers and what it means to negotiate productive tensions between political science and historical methodologies.
Lydia talks about her doctoral dissertation, in which she drew on political science, history, and her own experience at the State Department’s Libya Desk to analyze how diplomats make high-stakes decisions with very limited information. We discuss how history can be useful for analyzing institutional memory in government and private organizations, and how #applied history initiatives can help mitigate some of the institutional memory loss that is built into democratic politics.
We discuss Lydia’s positive experience using #AI in her work and talks about her ongoing efforts to anticipate policy trends rather than merely respond to them. We also talk about the punk band The Clash and how their 1982 hit song “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” can help us understand practical approaches to history.
Your Host
Patryk Babiracki
Patryk Babiracki is a historian, researcher and writer; professor & MA student advisor at the University of Texas at Arlington. PhD from Johns Hopkins. Promoter of #AppliedHistory: using historical concepts, frameworks, and methodologies to solve real-world organizational problems.
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