Louis P. Nelson

The Office of Academic Outreach has a threefold mission:

Direct academic resources toward the goal of public flourishing, foster respectful exchange of views and responsible engagement with community partners, graduate ethically-minded, community-oriented leaders committed to a healthy democracy.

UVA’s work in these areas takes place in Charlottesville, across the Commonwealth, the nation and the globe. Community Engagement includes a robust curricular program grounded in community partnerships and a commitment to the education of students for socially responsible, engaged citizenship. Public Service takes place in a variety of ways across the university from health clinics to K-12 programs to training future military officers through UVA’s three ROTC detachments. 

The University places a high commitment to supporting research that is clearly in the public interest, and we have a specific focus on research and teaching in Public Interest Technology. In his role as Vice Provost, Nelson serves as the chief advisor to the executive vice president and provost on all academic matters relating to community engagement and public service and he oversees numerous related academic units at the University including the Center for Liberal Arts, Morven Sustainability Lab, Public Interest Technology, Public Service Pathways, Mellon Race, Place & Equity Program, ROTC, and Virginia Humanities. The work of his office appears on two websites, Academic Outreach and Engaged UVA. 

Nelson is also a Professor of Architectural History and a specialist in the built environments of the early modern Atlantic world, with published work on the American South, the Caribbean, and West Africa. His current research engages the spaces of enslavement in West Africa and in the Americas, where he is working to document and interpret the buildings and landscapes that shaped the trans-Atlantic slave trade. He has a second collaborative project working to understand the University of Virginia as a landscape of slavery. Nelson is an accomplished scholar, with two book-length monographs published by UNC and Yale University Presses, five edited collections of essays, two terms as senior co-editor of Buildings and Landscapes--the leading English language venue for scholarship on vernacular architecture--and more than 50 peer-reviewed scholarly articles. His books and articles have been awarded the Abbott Lowell Cummings Prize, the John Brickerhoff Jackson Prize, the Allen G. Noble Prize, the Best Essay Prize (SESAH), the Catherine Bishir Prize, and Outstanding Book of the Year (SESAH), among others.