Thomas Andrews

  • Faculty Director
  • CENTER OF THE AMERICAN WEST

Thomas Andrews’ research and teaching are focused on western American, environmental, animal, Indigenous, and 19th- and 20th-century U.S. history. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Library of Medicine/National Institutes of Health Grant for Scholarly Works in Biomedicine and Health, a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars Award, and other fellowships. 


He is the author of Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War, which won six awards including a Bancroft Prize, Coyote Valley: Deep History in the High Rockies, winner of a Colorado Book Award in History, and a book in progress on the Great Horse Flu of 1872-73. His articles and essays have appeared in the Journal of American History, the Western Historical Quarterly, and other venues. 


Andrews was born and reared in Boulder and graduated from Fairview High School in 1990 before earning his BA at Yale and his MA and PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is one of only a handful of second-generation CU-Boulder faculty members (his father, John T. Andrews, joined the Geology Department and the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research in 1968). 

Before becoming a member of the CU Boulder History Department in 2011, Thomas Andrews taught at CU-Denver and California State University-Northridge. He lives in Denver with his wife, two teenagers, and a toy Australian shepherd named Roxie. In his spare time, he likes to hike, ski, and spend time with friends and family.