Lawrence Butler

Dr. Butler received his BA and MA from Oberlin College and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.  Trained as an art historian of Medieval Europe, the Mediterranean and Islamic world, Butler’s teaching and scholarly interests now range across pre-modern Eurasia, including the Silk Road connections between the Mediterranean world and East Asia. While at George Mason University he served as director of the Art History program, and as Coordinator of the Ancient Mediterranean Art and Archaeology minor.

Dr. Butler has taught at GMU and Hiram College and has also held research positions at a number of museums. He was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Turkey in 1982-83. He has been an active participant in the Semester at Sea program, taking students on academic study tours around the world.  He was the visiting lecturer in Art History on the Fall 1999, Summer 2004, and Fall 2009 voyages.  On the Summer 2011 voyage, he was the Global Studies lecturer.

In 2004, Dr. Butler was awarded George Mason University’s Teaching Excellence Award and in 2005 he was elected to Phi Beta Delta, the honorary society for international education.  He lectures frequently for the Smithsonian Associates on the arts and cultural history of Spain and Portugal, Turkey, China, and many other places in between.

Margaret Monnier

Margaret Monnier is an expert on the Iberian Peninsula and has been living in Spain for the past 25 years.  She has a Masters degree in History from the University of Granada focusing on the coexistence between Jews, Muslims, and Christians during the Medieval period on the Peninsula. For twenty years she has been sharing her knowledge of and passion for Spain and Portugal in the field of educational travel, lecturing for various University programs and at cultural conferences. Her areas of expertise also include the Basque Country, Portuguese history and the Pilgrimage to Santiago.

Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, Margaret also studied Modern Standard Arabic.  Her experience and knowledge Spanish and Portuguese History is as rich and varied as that of the contemporary daily life and cultural details on the Iberian Peninsula.

Brian Aivars Catlos

Brian A. Catlos earned a PhD in Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and currently holds appointments as Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Research Associate in Humanities at the University of California Santa Cruz. His work centers on Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations and ethno-religious identity in medieval Europe and the Islamic World, and the history of the pre-Modern Mediterranean. A board member of various academic journals, he also co-directs the Mediterranean Seminar, a major initiative and a forum for international and interdisciplinary collaboration in the emerging field of Mediterranean Studies. He has published a number of books which have been translated into eight languages, including the The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050–1300 (Cambridge, 2004 *Premio del Rey & John E. Fagg Prize), Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, 1050–ca. 1615 (Cambridge, 2014 *Hourani Book Prize), Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors: Power Faith and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014 *PROSE Award, hon. mention) and Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain (Basic: 2018). Recently, he co-wrote The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650–1650 (U California Press, 2022). Awards and distinctions include the Governor-General of Canada's Gold Medal for Academic Achievement, two National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowships, and many other universities, national and international fellowships and prizes. An avid independent traveller, he was worked and studied in Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, Ecuador, the US, Canada, Syria and Israel, and has travelled extensively in the Americas, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Hamish Scott

Hamish Scott is a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and Wardlaw Professor Emeritus of International History at the University of St Andrews. A Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he has published extensively on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century international relations, on enlightened absolutism and on nobility. Among his publications are The Emergence of the Eastern Powers 1756-75 (Cambridge, 2001) and The Birth of a Great Power System, 1740-1815 (Harlow, 2007); most recently he edited The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, c.1350-1750 (2 vols.; Oxford, 2015). Hamish is currently completing a major study entitled Forming Aristocracy: The Reconfiguration of Europe’s Nobilities, c.1300-1750.

Bob Smolik

Bob Smolik is a veteran diplomat and scholar.  He worked around the world at U.S. Embassies, looking behind the scenes at how local politics, economics, and societies work -- or don’t.  His expertise as Diplomat in Residence at the University of Michigan is in economics and trade, as well as in UN human rights and NATO security issues. As an economic diplomat he worked to open foreign markets to U.S. trade and investment on a fair and equal basis.   As political advisor to U.S. military commanders in Africa and Europe, he worked on conflict mediation.   He serves as ambassador of American society and culture, helping Washington to understand the political and economic dynamics of other nations. As an international lecturer on anti-corruption and good governance, he worked in over 30 countries throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Bob holds graduate degrees from Berkeley and Harvard, an undergraduate degree from Cornell, and he is fluent in five Romance languages. He engages audiences with passion and expertise, offering a look behind the scenes at how foreign cultures view the world.