Dr. Michael Dolski is Director of the Office of Historical Services (HO) and Command Historian at Headquarters, Air Force Reserve Command, Robins Air Force Base, George. He is also the principal historical advisor to the Chief of the Air Force Reserve (CAFR).
Dr. Dolski is charged with planning, organizing, and overseeing AFRC’s history and heritage program. He exercises personnel management responsibilities for AFRC/HO. He interfaces with AFRC components, Department of the Air Force (DAF), Department of Defense (DoD), Federal Government, and external organizations. He also participates in special projects and initiatives. Dr. Dolski is responsible for IMA deployments to support history requirements domestically or abroad, as well as the history efforts from the command down to subordinate units. Dr. Dolski ensures that AFRC complies with all DAF, DoD, and federal history and heritage management requirements. These responsibilities include generation of the Annual Command History Report, functioning the command’s archival repository, and oversight of heritage and outreach efforts. As the principal historical advisor to CAFR, Dr. Dolski helps provide historical context for decision-making.
In 2011, Dr. Dolski started as a research fellow with the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE). The ORISE fellowship supported the Central Identification Laboratory, Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), in Honolulu, Hawaii. While a fellow, Dr. Dolski researched cases of missing service personnel from America’s past conflicts. In 2013, he converted to a federal civilian position as a historian, continuing to support JPAC. JPAC was subsumed by a new Department of Defense organization, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), which stood up in 2015. At that point, Dr. Dolski shifted from historical research and analysis to help form and grow an external partnership capability for the agency. He moved to the National Capital Region from 2015 to 2017 to support this shift of agency priorities. The partnering initiative focused on leveraging the capabilities and expertise of non-federal institutions, such as American and foreign universities, research organizations, or avocational groups. Program success brought Dr. Dolski back to Honolulu in 2017 to helm the operational efforts of DPAA’s partnership efforts. From 2017 to 2023, he helped grow the internal capacity to support an expanding partner network with a concomitant increase in annual efforts. By fiscal year 2023, that network included more than 100 partner organizations with plans to conduct each year 80 different research projects, 80 separate field archaeology projects, and a diverse array of innovative or exploratory efforts.
Dr. Dolski worked as a declassification analyst on a contract for the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2004 to 2005. This position was based in Springfield, VA; however, the tenure involved two deployments to Iraq (2004) to help protect, preserve, and clear sensitive documents for release. In 2011, Dr. Dolski participated as a fellow in the West Point Summer Seminar in Military History. Dr. Dolski has taught many undergraduate and graduate courses, published, and presented on various topics in military history.
EDUCATION
2000 Bachelor of Arts, History, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
2004 Master of Arts, Strategic Intelligence, American Military University, Charles Town, WVa.
2012 Doctor of Philosophy, Military History, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa.
CAREER CHRONOLOGY
1. January 2004 – August 2005, Declassification Analyst, McNeil Technologies, Springfield, Va.
2. August 2006 – December 2015, Adjunct Professor of History, Burlington County College, Burlington, NJ
3. August 2011 – January 2015, Historian, Central Identification Laboratory, Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), Honolulu, HI
4. January 2015 – September 2017, Senior Partnerships Analyst, Partnerships and Innovations Directorate, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), Arlington, Va.
5. September 2017 – January 2023, Operations Officer and Acting Deputy Director, Partnerships and Innovations Directorate, DPAA, Honolulu, HI
6. June 2019 – December 2021, Adjunct Professor of History, Norwich University, Northfield, Vt.
7. January 2023 – present, Director of the Office of Historical Services and Command Historian, HQ Air Force Reserve Command, Robins Air Force Base, Ga.
MAJOR AWARDS AND DECORATIONS
2017 Civilian of the Year (Category III), DPAA
2022 Civilian of the Year (Category III), DPAA
PUBLICATIONS
D-Day in History and Memory: The Normandy Landings in International Remembrance and Commemoration, editor, University of North Texas Press, Denton, Tex., 2014
“When X Doesn’t Mark the Spot,” in Missing Persons: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Disappeared, Canadian Scholars’ Press, Toronto, 2016
D-Day Remembered: The Normandy Landings in American Collective Memory, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, Tenn., 2016
Histories on Screen: The Past and Present in Anglo-American Cinema and Television, editor, Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2018
“Memory and Memorialization,” in The Routledge History of Global War and Society, Routledge, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, 2018
“‘A Solemn Promise Kept’: The 1919 Elaine Race Riot and the Broadening of Habeas Corpus 100 Years Later,” Tulsa Law Review, January 2022
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS AND ASSOCIATIONS
Member, Society of Military History (SMH)
Member, Organization of American Historians (OAH)
Life member, The Ohio State University Alumni Association
(CURRENT AS OF MARCH 2023)