John Dichtl: Conference Keynote Spotlight

Friday Keynote Speaker

John Dichtl, President & CEO of the American Association of State and Local History (AASLH), has been announced as the Friday Keynote Speaker for the 20th Annual Local History & Historic Preservation Conference, to be held at the Hyatt Regency Milwaukee from October 14–16, 2026. His presentation is entitled, "A Semiquincentennial for What Purpose?"

John R. Dichtl is president & CEO of the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH), a national nonprofit membership association providing leadership and resources to help the history community thrive and make the past more meaningful for all people. Prior to joining AASLH in 2015, he was the executive director of the National Council on Public History (NCPH) for nine years and worked for the Organization of American Historians for fourteen years as deputy director and in several other roles. Dichtl received his MA and PhD in early American history from Indiana University, and from 2006 to 2015 was an adjunct faculty member of the history department at Indiana University Indianapolis. Before graduate school, he worked for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He is a 2004 graduate of the Seminar for Historical Administration (now called the History Leadership Institute), a program of the AASLH.

Dichtl helped to found the History Relevance Campaign and the International Federation for Public History. He is the author of Frontiers of Faith: Bringing Catholicism to the West in the Early Republic (The University Press of Kentucky, 2008).