Todd Michney

Associate Professor

Member Of:
  • School of History and Sociology
  • Digital Integrative Liberal Arts Center
Office Location: Old Civil Engineering G24
Related Links:

Overview

Todd M. Michney is an  Associate Professor in the School of History and Sociology who focuses on urban history, digital history, African American history, and the history of housing development. Dr. Michney is the author of Surrogate Suburbs: Black Upward Mobility and Neighborhood Change in Cleveland, 1900-1980(link is external) (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), as well as articles in the Journal of American HistoryJournal of Social HistoryJournal of Urban HistoryJournal of Planning History, and Reviews in American History. His current research interests include Black building tradesmen 1865-1965, the work and business of construction, as well as the origins of redlining(link is external) and other racially discriminatory New Deal housing policies. Michney has sat on the board of the Urban History Association and twice served as a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant evaluator.

At Georgia Tech, he was a member of the Center for Urban Innovation's research team from 2015-17, and was awarded three consecutive DILAC(link is external) grants from 2016-19 to digitize the Ivan Allen Mayoral Papers(link is external) and develop a customized search interface for that collection. For this project, Michney in 2019 won an award(link is external) for Excellence in the Educational Use of Historical Records from the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council, and in 2020, he along with two colleagues secured a two-year grant(link is external) from the NEH's Office of Digital Humanities to continue developing the project's user interface. Michney teaches a course entitled “Semester in the City: Engaging Communities,” which typically involves partnering with organizations that in the past have included the Historic Westside Cultural Arts Council, Emerald Corridor Foundation, Grove Park Foundation, and Greater Vine City Opportunities Program.

From 2018-23, Michney served as the Institute-wide Chair of Georgia Tech's Library/Faculty Advisory Board(link is external).  In 2021, he participated in the Commission on Research Next(link is external) as a member of the Phase II team.

Education:
  • Ph.D. in History, University of Minnesota, 2004
  • M.A. in History, University of Minnesota, 1997
  • B.A. in History, Case Western Reserve University, 1993