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Composition toy in the shape of a globe, from Nuremberg, c. 1860. Wood and paper, 10 1/4 ins. high (26 cm)
(Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich)
Our staff, executive board, and executive council
World History Association executive board
Ruth Mostern
President (2026-2027 term)
Ruth Mostern is Professor of History and Director of the Institute for Spatial History Innovation at the University of Pittsburgh, and President of the World History Association. She is the author of two single-authored books: Dividing the Realm in Order to Govern: The Spatial Organization of the Song State, 960-1276 CE (Harvard Asia Center, 2011), and The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History (Yale University Press, 2021), winner of the Joseph Levenson Prize from the Association for Asian Studies in 2022. She is also co-editor of Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana University Press, 2016). Ruth is Principal Investigator and Project Director of the World Historical Gazetteer, a prize-winning digital infrastructure platform for integrating databases of historical place name information. In 2025, Ruth joined the authorship team of Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (W.W. Norton), the leading college textbook in world history. To contact Ruth, please e-mail her at this address.
Eric Nelson
Treasurer (2026-2027 term)
Eric Nelson is a Professor of History at Missouri State University in Springfield. His research focuses on the uses of memory and space in religious peacemaking after sectarian violence in the early modern period. He is also active in the field of world history pedagogy as the coauthor of Ways of the World: A Brief Global History with Sources (Bedford/St. Martin's, 5th ed., 2022). To contact Eric, please e-mail him at this address.
Trevor Getz
Past President (2026-2027 term)
Trevor Getz does history in the traditional way — you know, writing — but also in comics, documentaries, and Lego. The most recent Past President of the World History Association, he is a Professor of African and World History at San Francisco State University. Trevor is the author or co-author of eleven volumes, including Abina and the Important Men, which won the 2014 James Harvey Robinson Prize. His work in history education includes lead roles in projects completed for Khan Academy, the OER Project, Washington DC State Board of Education, and New York City Board of Education. His comics feature in New York City’s Civics for All Comic Group. His documentaries focus on veterans. Trevor is the recipient of the American Historical Association’s 2020 Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award and the African Studies Association’s 2025 Distinguished Service Award. To reach Trevor, please e-mail him at this address.
Cynthia Ross
Vice President (2026-2027 term)
Cynthia Ross is Associate Professor of History at East Texas A&M University near Dallas, Texas. She holds numerous research awards including the Global Human Rights Fellowship and is a Global Fellow at her university. She is wrapping up as Program Chair for the WHA Conference in Korea, Editor of World History Connected, Editorial Board member for Asia Pacific Perspectives, and Conference Coordinator for the World History Association of Texas Annual Conference – North Texas. Her most recent publication “Dinner in the Trenches: Army Rations, Rolling Kitchens, and the Logistics of Food for American Doughboys” is in Mandy Link and Matthew Stith, Eds., Beyond No Man’s Land: New Perspectives of the First World War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). She has also published in World History Connected, World History Bulletin, The Middle Ground Journal, Agricultural History, and The Journal of South Texas. Her current monograph projects focus on the role of botanists in creating militarized landscapes in the Pacific and a global environmental history of Texas wine. To contact Cynthia, please e-mail her at this address.
Sarah Eltabib
Secretary (2026-2027 term)
Sarah Eltabib is currently Associate Teaching Professor at Adelphi University, where she has served on the faculty since 2008 in a variety of instructional, leadership, and service roles. Sarah is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Global Leadership at St. Mary of the Woods College. Her academic training emphasizes political systems, international law, human rights, ethical leadership, and global civic engagement. Sarah’s scholarly work focuses on the historical and contemporary intersections of political participation, free expression, human rights, and global leadership, with particular attention to marginalized populations and transnational contexts. She has ongoing manuscript projects examining ethical leadership, religious freedom, and civic activism in global history. In addition to my academic scholarship, she has contributed to applied educational initiatives through long-standing service with the College Board’s AP World History program. ​To contact Sarah, please e-mail her at this address.
Judi Freeman
Executive Director
Judi Freeman joined the World History Association as Executive Director in December 2025. She is an art historian by training, working as a museum curator and educator focused on modern and contemporary European and American art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Portland Museum of Art. She is the editor/author of The Dada and Surrealist Word-Image (1989), The Fauve Landscape (1990), Mark Tansey (1993), and Picasso and the Weeping Woman (1994). She shifted her career to education and served for 24 years as the Seevak Chair in History at Boston Latin School, teaching modern global history, the history of art, and co-built the school's first Senior Capstone program and course. Judi is currently completing a biography of 20th century American journalist Dorothy Thompson. To contact Judi, please e-mail her at this address. ​​​​
World History Association executive board
The Council consists of members of the Executive Board, identified above, as well as the individuals below, who serve as voting members.
Shane Carter
Council member (term ends 2028)
Shane Carter is a former high school teacher who is currently program coordinator for ORIAS (Office of Resources for International and Area Studies at University of California at Berkeley. In that role she develops and runs internationally and globally focused professional learning programs for k-12 and community college faculty on behalf of the international and area studies research centers at UC Berkeley. Shane has also produced two podcasts on behalf of the California Global Education Project (Points In Between and Future Imperfect) and wrote an essay entitled "What About This One With The Mice?" in Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State.
Shawna Herzog
Council member (term ends 2028)
A member of the World History Association since 2009, Shawna Herzog is a Scholarly Associate Professor of History at Washington State University who specializes in world history, with research interests in modern Britain, imperialism, gender, and slavery in colonial Southeast Asia. She earned her Ph.D. in World History from Washington State University in 2013, following an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from California State University, Fresno. The author of Negotiating Abolition: The Antislavery Project in the British Straits Settlements, 1795–1843 (Bloomsbury, 2021), Herzog’s research examines the global dimensions of empire, labor, and coercion, and her work has appeared in venues such as the Journal of World History and Slavery and Bonded Labor in Asia.
Catherine Mein
Council member (term ends 2027)
Catherine Mein teaches Modern World History and AP World History at Ballard High School in Huxley, Iowa. She is a National Board Certified teacher, whose work as a social studies educator has emphasized curriculum development, both in the classroom and for teacher professional development. Some of that work has been published through the Program for Teaching East Asia at the University of Colorado-Boulder. In her district, she has served as social studies department chair, PLC lead, and curriculum lead teacher for both K-5 and 6-12 social studies review. Mein has served on the Iowa Council for the Social Studies Executive Board for two decades, including as treasurer, president, and now professional development chair. She also serves as the chair of the NCSS World History Community.
Malcolm Purinton
Council member (term ends 2027)
Dr. Malcolm F. Purinton is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the History Department at Northeastern University where he teaches courses on World History, Capitalism, and Technology while also presenting public lectures on American alcohol and beer history. His recent book, Globalization in a Glass: The Rise of Pilsner Beer through Technology, Taste, and Empire examines the spread and domination of the light golden lager across the world during the late nineteenth century.
Rubén Carrillo
Council member (term ends 2028)
Biographical information to come
Monica Ketchum-Cardenas
Council member (term ends 2028)
Monica Ketchum-Cardenas is Professor of History and Sociology at Arizona Western College and Lecturer in History and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at San Diego State University-Imperial Valley. She serves on the board of directors for the Arizona Council for History Education and Arizona Historical Society's Rio Colorado Chapter, and is an institutional representative for the OERizona Network. Her interests include Latin American revolutions, international organizations, and trafficking. She primarily engages in teaching and curriculum development and recently published an OER History of Arizona course.
Rachel Moore
Council member (term ends 2027)
Rachel Moore is currently a professor of Humanities and History at Foothill and De Anza College and also taught Latin American history for the University of San Francisco. She is focused on developing new and innovative ways for teaching history to high school students with learning differences through her company, the Open Book Academy. She teaches and tutors from a pedagogy of openness and kindness based on developing relationships that make students feel safe and empowered. Rachel helps students to feel they can bring their backgrounds, experiences, and ways of viewing the world into their academic work. She is dedicated to helping them develop academic narratives and analyses that are both authentic to themselves and as well as accurate and meaningful interpretations of the subject matter being studied. Her areas of research include the history of violence within the context of nuclear disasters and post-traumatic stress disorder. She has published scholarship around auditory violence and veterans of the Gulf Wars as well as the medical history of the Black Death.
R. Charles Weller
Council member (term ends 2027)
R. Charles Weller, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of History (Career), Washington State University, and Senior Research Fellow, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. He is also a WSU Foley Institute-sponsored lecturer for Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau (2026-27). He has been a visiting fellow at Yale University (2010-11), a visiting researcher at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (2014-19), and Affiliate (Research) Faculty of History at George Mason University (2021-22). He has numerous publications in English and Kazakh. For more information about Charles, visit his website here.
World History Association executive board
As representatives of WHA publications and affiliated societies, the following individuals serve as ex-officio members of the Council.
Laura J. Mitchell
Editor, Journal of World History
Laura J. Mitchell teaches African and World History at University of California Irvine (UCI). She also serves as the faculty advisor of the UCI History Project, which creates community outreach and professional development for in-service and pre-service TK-12 teachers. Her research explores colonial societies in South Africa. She authored Panorama: A World History (2015) with Ross Dunn and The New World History: A Field Guide for Teachers and Teachers (2016) with Ross and Kerry Ward. She is a past president of the WHA and currently serves as editor of the Journal of World History.
Cynthia Ross
Editor, World History Connected
Cynthia Ross is Associate Professor of History at East Texas A&M University near Dallas, Texas. She also serves as Vice President of the WHA. She holds numerous research awards including the Global Human Rights Fellowship and is a Global Fellow at her university. She is wrapping up as Program Chair for the WHA Conference in Korea, Editor of World History Connected, Editorial Board member for Asia Pacific Perspectives, and Conference Coordinator for the World History Association of Texas Annual Conference – North Texas. Her current monograph projects focus on the role of botanists in creating militarized landscapes in the Pacific and a global environmental history of Texas wine.
Joseph Snyder
Editor, World History Bulletin
Joseph M. Snyder has served as editor of World History Bulletin since 2022. He is Associate Professor of History at Southeast Missouri State University, where he teaches courses on ancient history, African history, and British history. His primary research interests are British imperialism, Sudan and East Africa, and ancient Egypt. He has published on social development in British Sudan, the influence of the Fabian Society on British colonial development in Africa, literary criticism of the British Empire, and historical parallelism in ancient epic literature. His current book projects examine the place of the British Sudan in Anglo-Egyptian treaty negotiations after World War II (Bloomsbury) and Fabianised colonial development projects in Kenya, Uganda, and Sudan (SpringerNature).
Brenna Miller
History 21 (H/21) representative
Brenna Miller is Associate Director of History for the 21st Century, a collaborative project of the World History Association that produces expert-written, peer-reviewed, classroom-tested teaching modules for college-level introductory world history courses. She is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Washington State University, where she has taught since 2018 and focuses on curriculum innovation, student engagement, and large-enrollment world history instruction. For more information about Brenna, click here.
Jesse Spohnholz
History 21 (H/21) representative
Jesse Spohnholz is Professor of History at Washington State University, where he has been recognized with multiple college- and university-wide teaching awards, and Director of the History for the 21st Century. For nine years, he was also Director of the Roots of Contemporary Issues program at Washington State, a General Education program that introduces first-year students to historical thinking to offer them tools to respond to some of the most controversial and pressing issues facing the world today. He is the author of many publications, including three books on the history of refugees in early modern European history (for which he has won three book prizes), two edited collections, and a world history textbook, Ruptured Lives: Refugee Crises in Historical Perspective (Oxford University Press), as well as president-elect of the Sixteenth Century Society.