The New Public Intellectuals Are All on TikTok
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Han Parker has streaks of green running through her hair and sports a killer cat eye. On TikTok, she garners millions of views not for lip-syncing trendy audio or producing stylish #GRWMs. Instead, @historical_han_ goes viral for talking about…the archeology of art in the Roman Near East. Seriously.
Parker, 24, has multiple degrees in Classical Civilizations and Archaeology and subsidizes her doctoral stipend through content creation. During the pandemic, she took up TikTok as a joke. But soon, her videos, especially her “Archaeology News” and “Sappy History” series, were commanding views in the millions.
Much of her most popular content is concerned with Pompeii, the ancient city preserved in volcanic ash. When we chat, Parker tells me why she’s obsessed with the subject matter. While the vast majority of digs reveal artifacts of funerary, military, or religious value, the Vesuvian site raises different sorts of questions: “The way people decorated their homes, the colors and the murals—why would someone want a sex scene painted on their foyer?” she asks me conspiratorially.
According to TikTok analytics, her followers are mostly in the 18 to 34 year old range. Seventy-five percent of her viewers are female. Parker has received dozens of comments from historians-in-the-making: How can I do this? I’m going to college because of you. You gave me the idea for my thesis. For Parker, who is originally from Saudi Arabia, it’s a powerful validation of her online presence. “TikTok is getting me into a world that isn’t meant for me,” she says, indicating her hair and skin.
When I think of the Towering Public Intellectual—experts who have reached such a level of acclaim in their fields that their relevance bursts out of the dusty halls of academia and extends to the general public—I think of leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky. Or literary critic Harold Bloom. I think of the scholars I studied in grad school, when I was getting my first master’s in humanities. I think white and male—as most of us probably do. While there are notable exceptions (bell hooks, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Cornel West), these fields have largely been dominated by a particular...type.
It used to be that the most common way to reach this level of stature was by painstakingly ascending the academic ladder through presenting at conferences, publishing research, and locking down tenure contracts. But TikTok represents a seismic shift away from those old rules and rigid structures. While the scholarly world insists that professionals must “publish or perish,” TikTok offers women and non-white scholars direct access to an audience and a platform that encourages collaboration, while dismantling much of the tedious, inaccessible, othering BS of the Ivory Tower. In other words, it’s redefining who gets to be a public intellectual and for whom: overwhelmingly, by the girls for the girls.
I’m an educator myself—I teach AP U.S. history to high schoolers—and I’m the author of several curricula and lecture series in both history and literature. Over the last few years, my students urged me to get on TikTok, and while I wasn’t especially keen to become the public face of anything, I did find a lovely and welcoming community there (and yes, I did have one or two pieces on the Treaty of Tripoli gain some traction). I was also invited as a guest on a historical podcast or asked to comment on DeSantis’s book bans. But most importantly, my FYP became a stream of hard-hitting intellects-turned-creators. I was astonished to see the kind of engagement they garnered when they were able to draw a line between their often niche areas of expertise and present day concerns. Ancient Roman clothing hacks? Of course! (@helpfulhistory, with an astonishing 2 million views, boosted by the new popularity of the Roman Empire, no doubt). The dark side of being a ballerina in 19th century Paris? Check (@historiancaro, with over 150,000 views). A rollicking debate about whether the Spartans were losers and/or fascists? Of course (@professormeredith).
I was fascinated by the way TikTok was revolutionizing how public scholarship can look, whom it can represent, and how broad its reach can be. So I decided to sit down with a dozen of the platform’s resident scholars—historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and ethicists—primarily in the humanities, where many young female academics are doing the most exciting work. For most of these creators, TikTok was a creative outlet that took them by surprise during COVID. Their popularity and staying power is a credit to their storytelling.
Another common theme? These educators’ content is subverting the long-established narrative of History as Exceptional. While scholars centuries over have focused on exceptional outliers (celebrities, victories, or catastrophes), the new generation of inclusive creators is making waves by de-gatekeeping research and making history fresh and approachable. They’re centering the ordinary, dedicating more space for conversation around what it meant (and what it still means) to be simply human in extraordinary times.
Caroline Hackett (@historiancaro), an expert on female property owners during the French Revolution, chuckles when I ask what drew her to such a niche. “I’m interested in countering the stories we have always prioritized,” she says. “Why have we rewritten women from history as one-dimensional victims, when in fact many women owned property and made their own decisions? Women are not just one thing.” Meanwhile, Jen Cullison (@the_jenc), whose work focuses on archaeometry (dating historical sites and artifacts), uses their videos to translate lofty academic study in layman’s terms, like calling her XRF Spectrometer a “laser gun” or explaining the ramifications of repatriating cultural artifacts. “Archaeology in general is concerned with the mundane: You can tell that someone touched this a thousand years ago. You can see the fingerprints.”
Steph Black (@archthot), a Sidney, Australia, native, found herself living in hostels between field assignments in Spain, the UAE, and the UK. Conducting “bread and butter archaeology” for commercial construction firms was hardly paying the bills, and she didn’t have enough income for a social life. So she downloaded TikTok and filmed her first video in a room filled with 18 single beds. Four years and 200,000 followers later, Steph posts about her research on Iron Age settlements in Oman—work that only a handful of people in the world are doing, now broadcast to millions. She’s been interviewed by Rolling Stone. But mostly, she’s known for videos that pair the ancient world with engaging audio trends, from Prince of Egypt to Paris Paloma’s “Too Much Labor.”
On TikTok, researchers must be agile: Their content must strike the balance between entertaining, timely, and educational. Naturally, there are tensions in having newly public profiles. You have to balance the desire to teach about, say, trade routes between India and Pompeii, knowing that a video on Cleopatra’s eyeliner might perform better. TikTok doesn’t always reward our nerdiest impulses, and many of those pet passion videos never approach virality. The truth is, in order to showcase Civil War–era buttons or a lone shoe abandoned in a Roman well, compromises must be made. A video on Jack the Ripper might pay off, but one on Middle Eastern art may not. It can be tricky to convince an audience that an in-depth multipart series on Iron Age cookware, for example, is worth the investment when there isn’t a trendy, current hook to latch onto.
I ask Black if TikTok visibility changed how she spends most of her time. How do you balance this work and the work? She laughs and admits that she’s put a child lock on her phone to limit her hours. She restricts the number of posts per day. “I’m a whole ass adult….I have work, I have two degrees, and I cannot put it down.” Still: “I don’t know if I can reject the responsibility of being a source.”
As a kid in St. Augustine, Georgia, Alexandria Petrocelli (@alexandriaartifact) witnessed archaeological discoveries in real time. The town is the home of the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program, which has unearthed over 50 shipwrecks in the area. It’s been a focal point for historians and grad students from all over the South, and Petrocelli used to bike to watch the excavations up close, peanut butter sandwich in hand.
Those experiences inspired her own interest in archaeology. For the past several years, Petrocelli has worked as a public historian writing texts for middle schoolers as well as in communications with humanitarian programs and the UN. She also happens to be a specialist in nautical archeology and the astrolabe, a navigational tool dating back to the 4th century.
Petrocelli admits, like many others, she downloaded TikTok out of curiosity. During the early days of quarantine, it was mostly teens doing viral dance challenges, but she stopped scrolling when she found a video by a male “history influencer” misrepresenting Boudicca, Hypatia, Zenobia, and others—icons of female leadership and intellect in the ancient world. “I thought, Here’s what happens when men comment on historical women with no source material. Female figures become dolls or oversexed caricatures.” Her rebuttal was a simple Google slideshow set to music. It went viral, especially with teenage girls (unfortunately the video has been taken down after it was reported for “community violations”).
That’s not to say that this new academic world is entirely without risk. Most of these new creators have received backlash simply by virtue of being non-male or non-white academics flexing their expertise: There is always a cost to the exposure.
Sometimes this takes the shape of simple pushback: Many find male creators tagged in their comments along with #factcheck. Meredith Walker (@professormeredith), a professor of Women’s History, laughs it off. “There’s money in pretending to be an expert. Some of these guys just want to LARP as historians.” But sometimes the cost is significantly higher: trolls that respond with “Women shouldn’t be teachers” or “Why are you still talking?”
Other times, the threats are more direct. After debunking a video on ancient aliens, one creator received a comment that read, “People like you should be put down” (she didn’t want to attach her name to the anecdote out of fear of escalating the attacks). Others have been doxxed, one by a viewer whose avatar was Jefferson Davis. Black, for example, wears a beanie and a mask to shop for groceries. Another experienced panic attacks after being stalked. The majority of the scholars I interviewed have received threats of violence. “TikTok doesn’t have an ethical center. It’s always a gamble,” says Evan Thornburg (@gaygtownbae), a bioethecist from Philly. “It’s normal. Depending on my work, I can almost time the death threats.”
Petrocelli and others are banding together to combat the dark side of TikTok fame. Earlier this year, several archaeologists were invited to a round-table discussion about the platform, only to find the conversation dominated by two white male creators. It was clear that many of these marginalized creators needed a different sort of support—one that centered their voices. What emerged was the Humanities Guild, a community of scholars who provide training in online safety, professional development, and defensive engagement. Petrocelli says, “There is this lie that there’s only one or two seats for us, and we have to fight for them….We have managed to redefine the system, granting access to jobs, opportunities, and mentorship outside the lines. We are building our own table.” Now the organization boasts 130 members dedicated to showing up for each other, hosting joint livestreams, and keeping each other on the “right” side of TikTok.
I admit that after years of combating the slog of academic hierarchy, I am stunned to find this tribe—one so dedicated to collapsing the space between teacher and learner, while also creating an environment where educators and researchers can flourish on their own terms.
Dana Pertermann (@anthropologyminute) has a dizzying number of degrees, but the first thing she wants to show me is a jar crammed with soda can pull-tabs that will outlast us all as “index artifacts.” We talk for nearly two hours about battlefield archaeology at Little Bighorn and the presence of pie dishes in Roman ruins. While she’s got a steady following—around 10K— she’s not looking to hit big numbers. “Anywhere people want to learn, that’s where I am,” she shrugs. “I can’t dance, I’m not funny, and I have the imagination of a potato. But I have a few things I want to talk about that I think are important.”
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