Brandon Dillard

Brandon Dillard is Director of Historic Interpretation and Audience Engagement at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, the iconic home and historic plantation in Virginia, where he has worked for sixteen years. At Monticello, he leads interpretation efforts and works on exhibits, programs, and training. As a public historian, he focuses on best practices for encouraging connection between the visitor and the power of place. He works to bring people together across differences to encourage collective reflection on our shared pasts. He frequently consults and provides training for museums and historic sites across the United States and abroad on the practice and technique of public history, especially in the interpretation of slavery and Indigenous histories and perspectives, and he regularly lectures on public history, memory, and Native America. Dillard is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He comes from a long line of southern American storytellers, and he has spent most of his life thinking about public memory and identity. He serves on the North American Steering Committee for the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience and the Leadership Nominating Committee for the American Association of State and Local History. He is an interdisciplinary scholar with degrees in philosophy and anthropology, and he is currently a Royster Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is working towards a PhD in American Studies.