Amanda Demmer awarded history professorship

Amanda Demmer, associate professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech, has been awarded the Paul and Linda Austin Military History Professorship by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The professorship was established in 2023 by Paul and Linda Austin to help recruit and retain professors within the Department of History who are teaching or teaching and performing research in the field of military history.

A member of the Virginia Tech community since 2018, Demmer has created innovative, in-demand courses, built relationships with the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, and advanced a cutting-edge research agenda that broadens the field in ways of interest to historians, practitioners, service members, and the general public.

Demmer’s first book, “After Saigon’s Fall,” examines how humanitarian issues drove U.S. engagement with Vietnam after the war. It foregrounds how people from congressmen to U.S. prisoners of war to Vietnamese American activists shaped normalization. Demmer’s second book, “Silence is Complicity,” continues to push the boundaries of military history within this war and society framework by exploring military history from the other side and examining the development of the modern human rights movement through the life of Amnesty International leader Ginetta Sagan.

In the classroom, she has contributed to the department’s curriculum and strengthened the relationship with the Corps of Cadets. She has worked closely with the Army ROTC program to develop courses that are useful to cadets and that help them develop skills and knowledge of the U.S. military’s historical role in global politics.

Demmer received her bachelor’s degree from State University of New York at Fredonia and her Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire.