Meet Henry Tonks, the 2022 MONUM Summer Fellow

By Amelia Murray-Cooper

The Initiative on Cities (IOC) is proud to announce that Henry Tonks has been selected as the 2022 MONUM Summer Fellow. Henry will spend the summer working with the City of Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM). MONUM is Boston’s civic innovation team, responsible for promoting participatory urbanism, along with smarter city infrastructure and innovative service delivery. They are the catalyst and clearing house for civic innovation projects involving the City of Boston and their partners, from residents and community groups to universities, companies and other government agencies.

Henry is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department, where he studies postwar United States political history with Professor Bruce J. Schulman. Born in Birmingham, in the United Kingdom, he moved to Boston after completing his M.A. at the University of Missouri–Columbia. Henry’s research is concerned with the remaking of modern American liberalism, focusing on Democratic Party presidential primaries and the rise of the “New Democrats” in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Beyond an interest in politics past and present, Henry is enthusiastic about seventies cinema, American art museums, and city breaks.

We asked Henry a few questions about his interest in working at MONUM and what he’s looking forward to:

Amelia (IOC): Why did you choose to apply for this fellowship and how did you hear about it?

Henry: IOC had been on my radar since I first looked at BU for graduate school applications, and so I was on the lookout for research, fellowship, or other opportunities after I completed my PhD coursework. Plus, a colleague of mine in American & New England Studies works a lot with IOC and talked it up as a really dynamic institution — so when yet another colleague mentioned that he’d been a summer fellow, I thought I just had to apply! I was drawn to being able to work at MONUM, in particular, because of its track record in placemaking and its interagency reach. That second aspect of MONUM’s work means that a summer fellow might get a truly holistic experience of municipal government.

How did you first become interested in municipal governance?

I suppose my answer has two parts. I became interested in the local — place, politics, and community — from a very early age through my maternal family’s deep attachment to their home in the industrial Midwest of Granite City, Illinois. Understanding a city as a kind of organic space in which diverse populations, governmental structures, and economic resources form a social whole shaped my political and research interests. Then, after college, I worked at a business improvement district (BID) in my home city, Birmingham. I was mainly responsible for liaising with governmental (at City Hall) and non-governmental groups (at other BIDs across the U.K.); I also worked on placemaking projects and on event-planning with the district’s businesses. In 2017, the West Midlands elected a metro mayor for the first time and I volunteered on one of the campaigns; I enjoyed this more political experience as well. All of this time engaged in local governance (broadly construed) was incredibly rewarding, and I’ve always wanted to return for more, different experience in municipal government.

What are you most looking forward to about this summer?

Hard to choose one thing! The MONUM team have been really welcoming and generous with their time so far, and I’m also looking forward to meeting the other graduate student fellows — in fact, I didn’t know before applying that there would be grads from different universities at MONUM, so being able to make new connections and learn about a wide range of research areas has created a whole new reason to be excited about the fellowship. During interviews, the MONUM team stressed that graduate student fellows are given quite a bit of ownership of projects on which they work, which is daunting but a remarkable opportunity. Perhaps most of all, I’m looking forward to observing and learning how Boston works from inside city hall, and deepening my connections to the city that I now call home.