As Director of Pedagogy & Practice at the Derek Bok Center at Harvard University, Adam Beaver works primarily with faculty and graduate students in the humanities, social sciences, and Gen Ed. Trained as a Renaissance historian, Adam is especially attuned to what we can learn from the deep history of universities, including the different kinds of intellectual practices and communities which have inhabited them. Rather than see recent trends in higher education, from the digital revolution to the shift towards active learning techniques, as moments of rupture which render established practices (like lectures) obsolete, Adam is interested in thinking with teachers about the best way to blend different kinds of techniques and exercises into a bespoke style that works for each individual instructor and course.
Before coming to the Bok Center, Adam was an assistant professor in the History Department at Princeton University. He received his AB, AM, and PhD from Harvard, as well as his MSt from the University of Oxford.
