People

Faculty


Edmund Abaka, Ph.D.

Assoc. Professor
Director of Graduate Studies

e.abaka@miami.edu

(305) 284-3702
A graduate of the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, Dr. Abaka earned his Ph.D. in African History from York University and his Master of Arts in European History from the University of Guelph in Canada. He teaches African and African Diaspora History courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels. These include HIS 201: History of Africa I...

Robin Faith Bachin

Assoc. Professor
Assistant Provost for Civic and Community Engagement

rbachin@miami.edu

(305) 284-1047
Robin F. Bachin is the Charlton W. Tebeau Associate Professor of History, Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, and Founding Director of the Office of Civic and Community Engagement (CCE) at the University of Miami (UM). She received her B.A. from Brandeis University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude, with Highest Honors...

Hermann Beck

Professor
Cooper Fellow

hbeck@miami.edu

(305) 284-5947
Hermann Beck is an historian of modern Germany and modern Europe, with particular interests in political, intellectual, and diplomatic history, the history of anti-Semitism, and the histoire des mentalités.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles after studying Germanistik and ancient and modern...

Michael T Bernath

Assoc. Professor
CHARLTON W. TEBEAU ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
DIRECTOR OF GRADUATE STUDIES

mbernath@miami.edu

(305) 284-4554
Michael Bernath specializes in 19th-Century American history with particular emphases on the Civil War Era, the South, and 19th-Century cultural and intellectual history. Born in Maryland, he grew up in rural Pennsylvania. He received his bachelor’s degree from Brown University in 1997 and his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2005.His first book,...

Michael J. Bustamante

Assoc. Professor
Emilio Bacardí Moreau Chair in Cuban and Cuban-American Studies
Director, Cuban Studies, College of Arts & Sciences
Director of Academic Programs, Cuban Heritage Collection, University of Miami Libraries

mjb99@miami.edu

(305) 284-5203
Michael J. Bustamante (PhD, Yale University) is Associate Professor of History and the Emilio Bacardí Moreau Chair in Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami. He is the author of Cuban Memory Wars: Retrospective Politics in Revolution and Exile, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2021....

Sumita Chatterjee

Lecturer

s.chatterjee@miami.edu

(305) 284-4916
Sumita Chatterjee specialises in South Asia and its diaspora in the United States and the English Caribbean. Her research and teaching interests focus on women’s work, the role of gender, race, caste, and religious identities in shaping discourses around migration and the South Asian diaspora. She has a M.A. and M.Phil. in Modern...

Etana Habte Dinka

Asst. Professor
Assistant Professor of African History

ehd36@miami.edu

A Ph.D. graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London (2018), Etana H. Dinka is a historian of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa region. His research focuses on Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa's late nineteenth and twentieth-century political and environmental history. The themes include dynamics of...

Eduardo Elena

Assoc. Professor

edelena@miami.edu

(305) 284-4231
Eduardo Elena specializes in the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin America, with a particular interest in the societies of the South Atlantic region. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, he grew up in the United States and was educated at the University of Virginia (B.A.) and Princeton University (M.A., Ph.D.). Professor Elena teaches...

Max Fraser

Asst. Professor

mxf1106@miami.edu

(305) 284-5965
Max Fraser is a scholar of American labor, cultural, and political history. His research and teaching focus primarily on working class life and social movements in the twentieth century; on the rise of new strains of political conservatism in the decades after World War II; and on the class politics of American popular culture. He is currently...

Krista A. Goff

Associate Professor

kag86@miami.edu

(305) 284-3660 x6406
Krista Goff is an award-winning scholar who serves as an associate professor of history at the University of Miami. She is also co-editor of Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History and co-director of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian (REEES) Think Tank, which is a national program based at Howard University...

Stephen R Halsey

Assoc. Professor

s.halsey@miami.edu

(305) 284-2144
Stephen R. Halsey’s scholarship and teaching focus on the intersection of state power, economic development, and environmental change in late imperial and modern China (1850–present).  He completed his doctoral work in history at the University of Chicago but also studied foreign affairs at the Fletcher School of Law...

Phil Harling

Professor

prh47@miami.edu

Phil Harling works on Britain and the British Empire in the 19th century. His research and teaching interests include the formation of the modern state, the legitimation of political elites, the contradictions and slippages between liberalism and empire, and the politics of migration. Phil grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and got his BA from...

Scott Heerman

Associate Professor

msh124@miami.edu

(305) 284-2747
Scott Heerman is a scholar of eighteenth and nineteenth century U.S. history. His research focuses on slavery and emancipation in the U.S. and Atlantic World. He also teaches about western expansion and empire in U.S history and legal history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 2013, Professor Heerman earned his Ph.D. from the...

Martin A Nesvig

Professor
DIRECTOR OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES
Mexico and Mesoamerica Co-Faculty Lead - UMIA

mnesvig@miami.edu

(305) 284-5963
I am a native San Diegan who has lived in New England, Mexico City, New Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Sicily, and, for the last two decades, Miami Beach.  While a gringo, I consume a steady diet of Mexican exceptionalism and live in a Spanish-speaking home.  I am an out queer bisexual man with interests in all subjects related to...

Kate Ramsey

Assoc. Professor

kramsey@miami.edu

(305) 284-5581
Kate Ramsey’s research and teaching interests include the politics of religion, law, and performance in the Caribbean; histories of medicine and healing in the Atlantic world; museums in/and the Caribbean; and Caribbean intellectual history, artistic production, and social movements. Her first book, The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and...

Dominique K Reill

Professor
ON LEAVE 2023-2024

d.reill@miami.edu

(305) 284-5962
Dominique Kirchner Reill specializes in Modern European history with particular emphases on the Nineteenth Century, post-World War I Europe, post-World War II Europe, the Habsburg Empire, Italy, the Balkans, migration, nationalism, as well as socio-cultural and intellectual history. She received her Bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley...

Donald Spivey

Distinguished Professor
Cooper Fellow of the College of Arts and Sciences

dspivey@miami.edu

(305) 284-2737
  Donald Spivey was born and reared in Chicago and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he received his B.A., "with distinction in history" (1971) and a M.A. in history (1972), and from there to the University of California at Davis where he earned his Ph.D. in history (1976).  He specializes...

Hugh M Thomas

Professor

h.thomas@miami.edu

(305) 284-1556
Professor Thomas received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1988 and has taught at the University of Miami since then. He specializes in the history of Medieval Europe, focusing on England. His first book, Vassals, Crusaders, Heiresses, and Thugs: The Gentry of Angevin Yorkshire, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in...

Ashli C White

Assoc. Professor
Chair of History Department

acwhite@miami.edu

(305) 284-5005
Ashli White earned a BA from the University of Virginia, an MA from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.  She specializes in early American history, with particular attention to the connections between North America and the Atlantic World.  To date, most of her research has...