Since 1924, History Colorado has appointed a historian to work with the organization to preserve, interpret, and share Colorado’s past.

Our State Historian’s Council is led by noted professor Dr. Susan Schulten, who is joined on the council by respected historians from across the state.

Dr. Susan Schulten is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Denver, where she has taught since 1996. Dr. Schulten’s research innovatively uses old maps to tell new stories about history. Dr. Schulten has also authored multiple books, including A History of America in 100 Maps, which examines how maps can reveal new angles on our past and Mapping the Nation: History and Cartography in Nineteenth-Century America, that explores how maps transformed American life by organizing information. Her work has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her most recent work, Emma Willard: Maps of History, examines one of the nineteenth-century’s most influential educators. For several years, Dr. Schulten has also served as an editor for History Colorado’s podcast, Lost Highways.

Dr. Nicki Gonzales is a professor of history and vice provost for diversity and inclusion at Regis University. Her research interests include the American Southwest; the Chicano Movement in Colorado; Chicano social, political, legal, and environmental activism; and the history of land grant communities. She was a lead contributor to Nuestra Historias, a history of Denver’s Mexican American, Chicano, and Latino communities, and has served as an advisor for History Colorado’s exhibits El Movimiento: The Chicano Movement in Colorado and Zoom In: The Centennial State in 100 Objects. Dr. Gonzales is History Colorado's appointee to the Colorado Geographic Naming Advisory Board established by Governor Polis in July 2020.

Dr. Claire Oberon Garcia is a professor of English at Colorado College. Dr. Garcia’s research focuses on Black history portrayed through literature, including an emphasis on women of the Black Atlantic in the beginning of the twentieth century. She is the co-editor of many notable works, including Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Help: White Authored Narratives of Black Life, and her work has appeared in many books (most recently The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories and Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality 1848-2016) and journals such as The Colorado Magazine; Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, among others. As a scholar and teacher, Dr. Garcia is particularly interested in the archives of the marginalized, the silenced and the “expendable” who did not have access to official institutions and dominant power structures.

Dr. Thomas J. Noel is a retired professor of history and the former director of Public History, Preservation & Colorado Studies at the University of Colorado Denver. Known as “Dr. Colorado,” Noel has written numerous books and articles about the state and serves as a tour guide for History Colorado. His courses at CU Denver included regional history (Colorado, Denver, and the US West), historic preservation, heritage tourism, and the National Park Service, and classes on Colorado industries like mining and railroads. He is coauthor of Colorado: A History of the Centennial State. In 2022, the Board of Regents awarded Tom the University of Colorado Medal for his fifty years of teaching, co-authoring or authoring more than fifty books, longtime Sunday columns for the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post, and his regular Dr. Colorado gigs on Channel 9 (NBC) and innumerable public talks.

Dr. Jared Orsi is a professor of history at Colorado State University, the director of the Public and Environmental History Center, and the editor of the Western Historical Quarterly, which is the journal of the Western History Association. He specializes in environmental and borderlands history, teaching courses on US and Mexican history. His book, Citizen Explorer: The Life of Zebulon Pike, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award for history, and he served as an advisor on History Colorado’s Zoom In exhibition.

Dr. Charles Nicholas Saenz is a professor of history and assistant vice president of academic affairs at Adams State University. His areas of research include Spain, the Spanish Empire in North America, and Southern Colorado. He is the co-editor of The Geology, Ecology, and Human History of the San Luis Valley. Dr. Saenz has served as an advisor for History Colorado's Borderlands of Southern Colorado initiative and special exhibits De la Tierra: Reflections of Place in the Upper Río Grande and Expedition 1776: The Journey of Domínguez & Escalante. He currently holds an appointment on the Colorado Historic Preservation Review Board; between 2015 and 2020 he was president of the Sangre de Cristo National Heritage Area.

Dr. William Wei (Emeritus) is a professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder. He was the founding editor-in-chief of the online Colorado Encyclopedia and has held various national and international fellowships. His work focuses primarily on modern China, with research interests in Asian Americans. His book, Asians in Colorado: A History of Persecution and Perseverance in the Centennial State, was a finalist for the 2017 Colorado Authors’ League Award for General Nonfiction. He was a lead advisor on History Colorado's Zoom In exhibition in 2016–2017, and is the author of the exhibition’s companion book, Becoming Colorado: The Centennial State in 100 Objects.  He received the Asian American Hero of Colorado Award from the Colorado Asian Culture and Education Network in 2022.

Jason Hanson is the Chief Creative Officer and Director of Interpretation and Research at History Colorado, where he also serves as the Deputy State Historian on the State Historian’s Council. At History Colorado, he works with talented colleagues to create award-winning and groundbreaking exhibitions, actively build a collection that reflects the stories of all who have called Colorado home, and publish innovative original scholarship about Colorado history. He has led numerous exhibition projects and written widely on topics such as the role of monuments in society, the origins of the modern workplace, what we'll remember about 2020, gender roles in Utopian communities, environmental history, baseball, and beer. He is a member of the America 250 - Colorado 150 Commission helping the state get ready for our Sesquisemiquincentennial in 2026. Prior to joining History Colorado, he was a member of the research faculty at the Center of the American West at CU Boulder.