Invite Sara
History becomes meaningful when we talk about it together.
Sara Madden is a historian, anthropologist, archaeologist-in-training, researcher, author, and public storyteller whose work explores the places where history, memory, material culture, cultural heritage, and storytelling intersect.
Drawing from historical and archaeological research, museum interpretation, humanitarian education, material culture, and more than two decades of writing and publishing, Sara offers lectures, seminars, workshops, author visits, panel conversations, and community programs designed to bring history into the room.
Programs can be adapted for children, teens, adult learners, educators, colleges and universities, museums, libraries, historical organizations, book clubs, conferences, writing groups, and community education programs.
Seminars and Lectures
Hidden Histories: Finding the People the Record Left Behind
How do people disappear from history—and how do we find them again?
Drawing from her Hidden Histories research, Sara explores archival silence, historical erasure, overlooked lives, and the methods historians, archaeologists, and storytellers use to recover people whose experiences have been pushed to the margins.
Through documents, photographs, objects, material culture, oral histories, and unexpected archival traces, audiences are invited to consider not only who has been forgotten, but how historical memory itself is constructed.
Ideal for: colleges and universities, community education, libraries, museums, historical societies, conferences, and book clubs
What Objects Remember
Archaeology, Material Culture & the Stories We Carry
A stone. A shoe. A letter. A cooking vessel. A photograph tucked into a pocket.
Ordinary objects can preserve extraordinary histories.
This program explores archaeology and material culture as ways of understanding human experience. What can objects tell us that written records cannot? Why do people preserve certain things? How do museums shape the stories objects tell? And what responsibilities come with interpreting things that once belonged to someone else?
Ideal for: colleges and universities, museums, libraries, historical and archaeological organizations, community education, and lifelong-learning programs
Women History Tried to Forget
From scholars and healers to innovators, rebels, writers, makers, and ordinary women, history is filled with lives that survived only partially in the record.
Drawing from the research behind the Hidden Histories of Women series, Sara explores how women's histories are lost, distorted, attributed to others, rediscovered, and restored—and why recovering them changes our understanding of the past.
Rather than simply adding forgotten women back into familiar histories, this program asks audiences to consider the structures that determined whose lives were considered worthy of remembering in the first place.
Ideal for: women's organizations, colleges and universities, libraries, museums, historical societies, conferences, community education, and book clubs
War Beyond the Battlefield
War history often centers on generals, battles, weapons, and victory.
But who collected the dead? Who identified them? Who dressed wounds, fed civilians, protected cultural objects, rebuilt communities, cared for animals, restored damaged landscapes, and remembered those who never came home?
Drawing from her Hidden Histories of War research, Sara examines the people whose work begins where traditional military histories often stop.
The result is a different way of encountering war—one centered not only on destruction, but also on care, survival, memory, and repair.
Ideal for: military history organizations, museums, colleges and universities, veterans' organizations, libraries, historical societies, conferences, and community education
Memory in Our Hands
Objects, Place & the Stories We Carry
Why do human beings keep things?
Drawing from archaeology, anthropology, material culture, heritage studies, and storytelling, this program explores the relationship between memory and objects—from family keepsakes and archaeological artifacts to memorial objects, museum collections, and seemingly insignificant things carried through moments of migration, displacement, conflict, and loss.
Participants are invited to consider not only what objects tell us about the past, but why preserving them matters.
Ideal for: museums, colleges and universities, libraries, archaeological and historical organizations, community education, and general audiences
Reweaving the Stories We Think We Know
Fairy tales have traveled across languages, borders, generations, and centuries—but they have never remained unchanged.
Sara explores what happens when historical research meets familiar stories and how retelling fairy tales can illuminate gender, class, war, identity, cultural memory, and the perspectives traditional stories leave outside the frame.
This program can be adapted for younger readers, adult audiences, educators, or writers interested in using familiar stories to investigate unfamiliar histories.
Ideal for: schools, young adult audiences, libraries, literary conventions, writers' conferences, book festivals, colleges, and book clubs
Research & Writing Workshops
From Archive to Story: How does a historical footnote become a book?
Sara takes audiences behind the research process—from the first intriguing detail through archives, sources, material evidence, historical context, fact-checking, and finally storytelling.
Participants explore how writers identify the details that make history tangible, recognize when research is serving or overwhelming a story, locate overlooked perspectives, work responsibly with real historical events, and determine when it is finally time to stop researching and begin writing.
Programs can focus on nonfiction, historical fiction, writing for younger readers, or transforming one body of research into stories for multiple audiences.
Writing History Back In
What do we do when the historical record goes quiet?
This workshop explores the methods historians and writers can use to investigate people whose lives survive only in fragments.
Participants consider archives, newspapers, photographs, objects, institutional records, oral histories, material evidence, and—just as importantly—the significance of what is missing.
The program also examines the ethical boundary between evidence and imagination: how can we tell compelling stories about the past without claiming to know what the evidence cannot tell us?
Schools & Classrooms
Programs for younger readers can be tailored by age, curriculum, and book and may include:
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Interactive author readings
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Historical storytelling
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Object-based learning
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Writing and storytelling activities
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Fairy tale and history workshops
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Q&A with an author and historian
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Classroom discussion guides and downloadable activities
Programs can be developed in collaboration with teachers to complement classroom learning goals.
Book Clubs & Reading Groups
Sara is available for in-person and virtual conversations with reading groups exploring selected works.
Programs can range from informal author conversations and Q&A sessions to facilitated discussions exploring a book's historical context, research, themes, characters, and questions.
Book-specific reader guides and discussion resources are also available for many titles.
Conferences, Museums & Universities
Sara offers talks, seminars, panel participation, workshops, guest lectures, and customized programs for organizations interested in history, anthropology, archaeology, heritage, museums, material culture, women's history, war, historical memory, literature, and storytelling.
Programs may be adapted as a single lecture, workshop, multi-session seminar, facilitated discussion, or conference presentation.
Teaching & Public Humanities
Sara's interdisciplinary work sits at the intersection of history, anthropology, archaeology, cultural heritage, material culture, humanitarian education, museums, and storytelling.
She holds bachelor's degrees in Anthropology and History and is completing a master's degree in Archaeology and Heritage, expected September 2027.
Her public-facing work includes museum interpretation, historical research, humanitarian education, writing and publishing, classroom and reader resources, and the development of the Hidden Histories and Material Memory nonfiction projects.
At the center of that work is a recurring question:
What—and whom—have we been taught not to notice?
Bring History Into the Room
Sara's programs can be tailored to the interests, experience level, age, and time available for each audience.
For seminars, guest lectures, classroom visits, conferences, museum and library programs, author events, workshops, or other speaking and teaching opportunities: Contact Sara!
Contact
Let's start the conversation!
For questions about books, speaking and teaching opportunities, classroom or museum programs, conferences, workshops, interviews, book events, rights and adaptations, or other professional inquiries, please get in touch.
Speaking, Teaching & Events
Interested in inviting Sara to speak, teach, lead a seminar or workshop, visit a classroom, participate in a conference, or join a book discussion?
Explore available lectures, seminars, workshops, school programs, and other opportunities on each genre page.
Media & Interviews
Sara is available for podcast, radio, print, digital, and television conversations relating to her books, research, and areas of interest.
For review copies, interviews, podcast appearances, author features, or other media inquiries, please use the contact form.
Rights & Professional Inquiries
For publishing, translation, adaptation, permissions, collaboration, and other professional inquiries, please get in touch.
Start a Conversation
Planning an event, classroom visit, conference, interview, reading, seminar, or workshop? Please include your organization, audience, proposed date, location or virtual format, and what you would like your audience to take away from our time together.