Biography

Andy Kirk is a UNLV history professor and director of the university's public history education program. Kirk's research and teaching focuses on the intersections of cultural and environmental history in the modern U.S. with a special interest in the American West, public history, and counterculture. His research explores the environmental and public histories of atomic landscapes and the lived history of nuclear testing.

Kirk is a founder and current member of Preserve Nevada, a statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of Nevada’s cultural, historical, and archeological heritage. His work has led to innovative, collaborative federal and regional research partnerships and has resulted in more than 20 National Register of Historic Places nominations and National Historic Landmark designations across the West.

As a public historian, his projects also include a fifteen-year partnership with the National Park Service to research the historic and cultural resources of Western National Parks and public lands. 

Kirk is co-editor of the Modern American West Series for the University of Arizona Press and serves on several national academic organization boards in his fields. His publications in public and environmental history were reviewed or featured in The New York Times, Nature Science, PBS NewsHour, The Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Preservation Magazine, The Discovery Channel,  and more. He is the author of Doom Towns: The People and Landscapes of Atomic Testing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), co-author of American Horizons: U.S. History in a Global Context (New York: Oxford Press, 2015), Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, Culture/America Series, 2007), and Collecting Nature: The American Environmental Movement and the Conservation Library (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001).