Richard E. Turley Jr. is the former managing director of the Church History and Family History Departments of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where he helped envision, launch, and lead many of the church's most important historical projects of the last four decades. He has authored or edited more than 20 books on Latter-day Saint and Western United States history. His lecture, titled "Team History: The Latter-day Saint Historical Enterprise, 1986–2025," will explore how collaboration transformed modern Latter-day Saint history research.
If history were an Olympic event, it would likely be categorized as an individual sport. Over the centuries, many of the best-known works of history have been produced by individual authors. But in 1977, Latter-day Saint historian Leonard J. Arrington wrote a personal essay in which he promoted the idea of historians working in teams. Dr. Arrington, whose Ph.D. was in economics, titled his essay, "Historian As Entrepreneur." The essay exudes his sense that tackling the most difficult historical topics and projects would, require teamwork.
Building on this concept, over the last four decades, historians and other scholarly professionals of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have successfully used the team approach to tackle projects that might otherwise have proved impossible because of their scale or complexity. In this lecture, Richard E. Turley Jr. will recount the achievements of the church's professional staff over the last four decades in fulfilling Dr. Arrington's vision of team history.
