Ernesto Bassi is Associate Professor of History and the Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program at Cornell University. His work addresses two questions: How do people develop geographic and cultural identifications? How do geographic regions come into being? He explores “the role circulation (of goods, people, news, and ideas) plays in the configuration of geographic spaces, collective identities, geopolitical projects, and political allegiances,” from a Latin American and Caribbean perspective – specifically “looking out to the world from the Caribbean coast of Colombia.” He is the author of numerous academic articles in this field, as well as the book, An Aqueous Territory.
Richard Buxbaum is Jackson H. Ralston Professor of International Law (Emeritus) at Berkeley Law School. Prior to his faculty role at UC Berkeley, he practiced law in New York and with the U.S. Army. During his academic career he focused on corporation law and comparative and international economic law, including 16 years as editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Comparative Law. His tenure also included involvement in several of the defining events of the 20th century: defense counsel for members of the Free Speech Movement (1964-1967), representation in cases related to Vietnam War protests, defense counsel in cases related to the Third World Strike (1969-1970). Additionally, Richard Buxbaum was deeply connected to the founding of ORIAS itself. He founded and chaired the Center for German and European Studies and Center for Western European Studies (now part of the Institute for European Studies) and from 1993 to 1999 he was dean of international and area studies (the “IAS” in the ORIAS acronym).
Emily Gottreich is a specialist in Moroccan Jewish history and Muslim-Jewish relations in the Arab-Islamic world. She is the author of The Mellah of Marrakech: Jewish and Muslim Space in Morocco’s Red City (Indiana University Press: 2007), published in French translation by the University of Mohammed V Press in Rabat in 2016, and co-editor with Daniel Schroeter of Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa (Indiana University Press: 2011). Her most recent book is Jewish Morocco: A History from Pre-Islamic Times to the Present (London: I.B. Tauris). She currently serves as Adjunct Full Professor in Global Studies and Political Economy at the University of California, Berkeley, where from 2014-2020 she was Chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. She is a three-time Fulbright awardee, a past president of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, and a winner of the Phi Beta Kappa award for Excellence in Teaching.
Alan Karras is Associate Director of Interdisciplinary Social Science Programs. In his more than twenty years at Berkeley, he has taught courses on world history, classical political economy, Caribbean history, and the history of transnational crime—among others. His research interests are in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, and global interactions more broadly, especially as they relate to transnational transgressions like smuggling, fraud, and corruption. He is the author of Smuggling: Corruption and Contraband in World History (2010), Sojourners in the Sun: Scots Migrants in Jamaica and the Chesapeake, 1740-1800 (1993), and the coeditor, with John R. McNeill, of Atlantic American Societies: From Columbus through Abolition, 1492-1888 (1992). He also has co-edited a book, Encounters Old and New in World History (2017), with Laura Mitchell, that makes a case for historians to engage more with the public. He served as one of the editors for the Cambridge Dictionary of World History and was on the board of editors for Cambridge University Press's multi-volume Cambridge World History. Since 2015, he has been the lead author for the AP Edition and the Lead Media Author for other editions of the widely used textbook, Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (W.W. Norton).
Noah Theriault is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of cultural anthropology, political ecology, and social history. His regional focus is on Southeast Asia and the Philippines. Since 2006, his research has examined how indigenous rights, biodiversity conservation, and capitalism collide on Palawan Island, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, which is undergoing rapid social and ecological change due to settler colonization and extractive industries. More recently, he began investigating how Manila’s current “traffic crisis” fits into the city’s long history of social and environmental inequality. In 2017, he joined the History Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where his course offerings include Introduction to Global Studies, Global Studies Research Seminar, Modern Southeast Asia, Histories of Social Movements, Un-Natural Disasters, and Hostile Environments.
Kerry Ward is an Associate Professor of History at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She is a former editor of the "Journal of World History" and was recognized with the "Pioneers of World History" award by the World History Association. She co-edited, with Ross E. Dunn and Laura J. Mitchell, "The New World History: A Field Guide for Teachers and Researchers" (University of California Press, 2016) and is the author of "Networks of Empire: Forced Migration" in the Dutch East India Company (Cambridge University Press, 2009).