Brooke Neely is research faculty at the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her interdisciplinary research and teaching focuses on public history, community engagement, and belonging in the western United States. She has worked and written at the nexus of U.S. national parks and tribal nations for nearly two decades, most recently serving as a Principal Investigator for two ongoing projects titled Indigenous Connections at Rocky Mountain National Park and Native Peoples and the Zane Grey Museum (Upper Delaware River NPS site).
She is the author (with Michelle Samura) of “Social Geographies of Race: Connecting Race and Space” in Ethnic and Racial Studies (2011). She is an editor and contributor (with Christina Gish Hill and Matthew Hill) of the book National Parks, Native Sovereignty: Experiments in Collaboration (University of Oklahoma Press, March 2024).
She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a B.A. in sociology from Whitman College. When not at the Center, she can be found running after her two daughters or enjoying a still moment with her husband.