Liam Riordan

I have been a member of the History Department faculty at UMaine since 1997, and I began a term as Department Chair in 2025. My current major book project is about loyalists—those who opposed the rebellion that created the United States. My approach there is to focus on five individuals from very different corners of colonial society who each had good reasons to reject the patriots, especially as victims of rebel violence.

I teach all levels of students at UMaine. My entry-level classes are the first half of the US Survey to 1877 (HTY 103), an Introduction to Public History (HTY 205), and The Creation of the Atlantic World, 1450-1888 (HTY 240). My advanced undergraduate and graduate courses focus on early America (roughly to the 1830s) with an emphasis on social and cultural history.

I am currently a member of the Nominating Committee of the New England Historical Association, board member of the Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust in Orland, Maine, and active in the National History Day program for grade 6-12 students in Maine. I am a past Director of the University of Maine Humanities Center (2014-2016), now the McGillicuddy Humanities Center, past board member of the Maine Humanities Council (2010-2017), and past chair, vice-chair, or member of the City of Bangor’s Historic Preservation Commission.

Select Awards

• Research Fellow, International Center for Jefferson Studies, Charlottesville, Virginia (2023)
• Research Fellow, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia (2022)
• Maine Heritage Lecturer, awarded by College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Maine (2020)
• Neal W. Allen, Jr., History Award from the Maine Historical Society (2020)
• Outstanding Faculty Member, Service and Outreach, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Maine (2020)
• Fulbright Scholar Award, University of Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom-United States Fulbright Commission (2012)