Preserving Peace

Wendy Chmielewski, the George R. Cooley Curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, received the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Peace History Society (PHS) for outstanding service to the society and for exemplary scholarship. Chmielewski has served as president, vice president, and board and committee member of PHS and published on the topics of women’s peace activism, political activity, and diplomacy from the 19th through the 21st centuries.

Her current projects include a monograph with Jill Norgren on women who campaigned for political office before they could vote, and a digital database of the biographical records of nearly 4,000 U.S. women who ran for public office before 1920—a crucial contribution to future generations of peace researchers. Chmielewski has greatly expanded the archive’s manuscript collections; won grants to digitize audio-visual recordings on women’s peace activism, the anti-nuclear movement, and the movement against the Vietnam War; and, along with other Peace Collection staff, developed websites, databases, and an award-winning research guide.

“I am deeply honored to have received the award and the recognition of my colleagues in the profession,” says Chmielewski, who has worked at Swarthmore for 33 years. “It affirms my own scholarship and what I have accomplished in the Peace Collection over many years.”