NERWHA Officers

David Kalivas, President

Professor Emeritus and Director of the Honors Program
Middlesex Community College
kalivasd@middlesex.mass.edu

David Kalivas is Professor Emeritus and former Director of the Commonwealth Honors Program at Middlesex Community College where he taught from 1981 until his retirement in 2020. David continues teaching part-time as Senior Adjunct Professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He has lectured on topics ranging from the history of religion, race/racism, and the Silk Road at the Cary Library in Lexington, the Tewksbury Public Library, the MILES Program at Middlesex, the University of Maryland’s Humanities Series, Harvard University, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Stockholm School of Economics Riga Campus. He is a former editor of H-World (2000-2021) and is also active in the World History Association as well as the New England Regional World History Association. David has a B.A. Suffolk University, M.A., University of Connecticut, and Ph.D., Northeastern University.

Term ending 31 December 2023

David Kalivas’s CV.

Christoph Strobel, Vice President

Professor of History
UMASS-Lowell
christoph_strobel@uml.edu

Christoph Strobel is Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he teaches courses in Indigenous and world history. He is the author of Native Americans of New England, The Global Atlantic 1400–1900, The Testing Grounds of Modern Empire, co-author with Alice Nash of Daily Life of Native Americans from Post-Columbian through Nineteenth-Century America, and he has published three books on immigration. Christoph’s scholarly essays appear in various academic journals and edited collections.

Term ending 31 December 2023

Christoph Strobel’s CV.

Alfred J. Andrea, Secretary

Professor Emeritus of Medieval History
University of Vermont
aandrea@uvm.edu

Alfred J. Andrea, has been on the faculty at the University of Vermont since 1967, having retired from full-time teaching in 2001, with the rank of Professor Emeritus. In retirement, he continues his research and publications in three areas of world history scholarship: the crusades, 1095–1700; papal-Byzantine relations, 330–1453; and the transmission of culture along the Silk Road, 100–1350 CE. He also serves both the World History Association and NERWHA in a variety of capacities, and lectures on world history topics throughout the USA and abroad. He has recently offered graduate-level seminars on various world history topics at universities in Turkey, China, Taiwan, and Germany.

Term ending 31 December 2023

Alfred Andrea’s CV.

Dave Burzillo, Treasurer

History Teacher
The Rivers School (retired)
d.burzillo@rivers.org

David Burzillo has been teaching world history at the high school level for the past thirty-four years, and for the past twenty-nine years he has taught at the Rivers School in Weston, MA, where he also serves as the school’s archivist. Besides teaching the survey course in world history, he teach courses on Big History, Infectious Disease in History, Global Environmental History, Empires, and the History of Writing. His major research interests currently are Big History and ancient languages. He is particularly interested in the relationship of language, culture, and history, and has spent a lot of time in recent years working with languages from ancient Southwest Asia. He attended the meeting at Northeastern at which NERWHA was founded in 1994 and has served the organization continuously in a variety of capacities since that time.

Term ending 31 December 2023

David Burzillo’s CV.

NERWHA Executive Council

Holly-Lynn Busier

Term ending 31 December 2023

Shawn Driscoll

Shawn Driscoll is a Doctoral student in the Global Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. He is also an Adjunct instructor at UMass Lowell in the History and Political Science Departments. Shawn’s teaching philosophy embraces a multi-media approach and cultural focus. In teaching both history and political science, Shawn uses popular culture and media, both primary and secondary source based, in his classes. Shawn’s topical focus includes twentieth century American history, politics, presidential history, global popular culture and specifically the use of television and film in exploring the humanities and social science. Shawn resides in Worcester Massachusetts and has recently published books on the 1918 Influenza Pandemic (The Grip, 2020, Dutcher and Ellsworth) and Nightlife in Cambridge Massachusetts (We Are But Your Children: An Oral History of the Nightclub ManRay, 2022, Quidnet Press) and his most recent publication “Prime Time Vet: Evolution of the Vietnam Veteran on Television.” 2022, PopMeC Research Blog.)

Term ending 31 December 2023

Shawn Driscoll’s CV.

Nicolas Hardisty

Nicolas Hardisty is currently the program manager and historian at Tall Ships America, the national organization for tall ships and education at sea. He creates maritime history programming for North America’s tall ship fleet, and he is building an open digital archive documenting American sail training, tall ships, and education at sea. He completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees in history at Rhode Island College, with a focus on 19th century African American citizenship. He has since taught at Rhode Island College and Community College of Rhode Island. Nic’s recent scholarship has been on American maritime history, with particular attention paid to Black and Indigenous mariners. He is a co-founder of Global Empire and Resistance Scholarship, which aims to generate critical understanding of Empire, and produce knowledge that informs the theory and practice of resistance. G.E.A.R.S. conferences are free and are committed to welcoming and supporting early career, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, gender diverse, and international scholars. Nic is co-authoring a book on scholars who have experienced vicarious trauma through their research content, and is also a founding member of the tall ships industry’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee.

Term ending 31 December 2024

Nicolas Hardisty’s CV.

James Ikeda

James C. Ikeda is a history teacher at Quincy High School, an adjunct professor at Bunker Hill Community College, and a Ph.D. student in World History at Northeastern University. Since 2012, he has taught many different courses, including both World History surveys, both US History surveys, Civics, African American History, Asian American History, Introduction to Philosophy, and an honors seminar on political street performance. James’s research focuses on the transnational dimensions of the Black Radical Tradition, the US Third World Left, and Black Nationalism, including the impact of postwar decolonization and events like the Cuban Revolution on Black radical thought.

Term ending 31 December 2025

James Ikeda’s CV.

Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson is a Lecturer in History at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.  A lifelong New Englander and member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), he majored in history at Earlham College and did graduate work at Boston University, conducting research on environmental history and technology in Zambia and Zimbabwe in 1994-5 and in Great Britain.  Previously he taught for a decade at Bentley University, and also at Simmons College, Bridgewater State College and Brandeis University.  He retired in 2019 after two decades in the BU Library.  Research and teaching interests encompass slavery, abolition and race; epidemic and pandemic disease; colonialism; the Crusades; labor migration and history; gender relations; war and peace studies.  Publications include several pieces in J.C. Rodriguez ed., Slavery in the Modern World; “Environmental History” in New Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences; “Managing the Rain from Heaven” in Cultural Survival Quarterly (1999); “Is America on the Right Track?” in the New York Times (2012); and nearly two hundred scholarly and professional book reviews, especially for the ALA journal Choice.  He is an active member of five faculty or staff unions.

Term ending 31 December 2025

Angela Lee

Angela A. Lee is a world history educator at Weston High School in Weston, MA. Since 1998, she has developed the Modern World History curriculum as well as the AP World History course at Weston High School, MA. Since its inception in 2002, Angela has been involved as a Reader and then a Table Leader for AP World History. She is an active member of NERWHA’s Executive Council and has served on the Membership and Nominations Committees for WHA.

Term ending 31 December 2025

Angela Lee’s CV.

Violetta Ravagnoli

Violetta Ravagnoli is Assistant Professor of History at Emmanuel College in Boston where she teaches courses in Asian history, world history, and migration history. She is also the coordinator of the Colleges of the Fenway new Minor in Migration Studies. The focus of her research is Chinese migration. Her current book project is titled: Networks Without Borders: The Building of Chinese Ethnicity in Rome. She published a book chapter on the topic titled: Toward a Glocal Oral History of Chinese Migration to Rome (Firenze University Press, 2016). Her new project is a comparative analysis on the history of Chinese and Italian migrations to Boston since the late nineteenth century, where she investigates issues of identity formation and ethnicity through the global connections of festivals, food, and ceremonies.

Term ending 31 December 2024

Violetta Ravagnoli’s CV.

Nicholas Roberts

Nicholas Roberts earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Notre Dame, where he was a Presidential Fellow and a research fellow with the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. Before, he earned an M.A. in History from Georgetown University. He is a specialist of Islamic world history, with particular focus on the modern period.

His current book project, A Sea of Wealth: Sayyid Sa‘id bin Sultan, His Omani Empire, and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace, draws upon research in a dozen archives across four continents. This book uses the reign of Oman’s longest serving ruler as a lens for highlighting the formative role the Omani Empire played in uniting the Atlantic and Indian Oceans into a shared oceanic marketplace, a crucial step in the emergence of modern global capitalism.

At Norwich, he teaches courses on world history and the histories of Muslim societies, in addition to courses for the International Studies program, which he directs. He also works closely with the Kreitzberg Library staff for building Norwich’s Arabic, Near Eastern, and Islamic Studies holdings, and works with the staff of Sullivan Museum.

Term ending 31 December 2024

Nicholas Robert’s CV.

Kristin Hayward Strobel

Kristin Hayward Strobel is a World History teacher at Lexington High School. She has been teaching World History in all its various forms since 2000, and at Lexington High School since 2005. She loves helping students make connections between various cultures and between the global past and their present. She believes every student has their own important story, perspective, and strengths to share and that analytical thinking is essential in a democracy. She is a National Geographic Certified Educator, an alum of the TransAtlantic Outreach Program (TOP) and a recipient of a Fulbright Hays grant to study in East Africa and the Swahili Coast. She has been published in
Education about Asia and presented at numerous conferences and workshops including for Boston University’s Africa Outreach Program, Harvard’s Middle East Outreach Program, the Northeast Regional Social Studies Conference, the Northeast Regional World History Association, and the Educators for Teaching South Asia Conference hosted by Harvard’s South Asia Institute.

Term ending 31 December 2023

Ex-Officio Members of the NERWHA Executive Council

Heather Streets-Salter, Director, World History Program, Northeastern University

Heather Streets-Salter is Department Chair and Director of World History Programs at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her Ph.D. in History from Duke University in 1998. She is the author Martial Races: The Military, Martial Races, and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857-1914 (Manchester University Press, 2004), Traditions and Encounters: A Brief Global History (McGraw-Hill, 2006) with Jerry Bentley and Herb Ziegler (now in its third edition), and Modern Imperialism and Colonialism: A Global Perspective (Pearson Longman, 2010, now with Oxford University Press 2015) with Trevor Getz. She is currently writing a monograph entitled Beyond Empire: Southeast Asia and the World During the Great War for Cambridge University Press. Her next project is called The Chill Before the Cold War: Communism and Anti-Communism in Colonial Southeast Asia in the Interwar Period.

Heather Streets-Salter’s CV.

Kerry Vieira, Executive Director, The World History Association

Kerry Vieira’s CV.