Michael Tucker

Dr. Michael Tucker earned his B.A. in Education, British and World History at Dominican College with a study abroad in England and Ireland for a senior research paper. He earned his Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in the African Diaspora in Mexico. His Ph.D. is in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in history, anthropology, social science and teacher education at the University of Wisconsin Madison. As a graduate student in a teacher exchange program between the University of Wisconsin and Umea University in Sweden, he specifically researched teacher training in history and language as it related to the Indigenous Sami of Northern Scandinavia. Michael studied the Swedish language in order to be able to communicate with the Sami of Northern Sweden.

Michael has been a world history enthusiast since his youth. He decided to pursue history in college and became an historian and educator with special expertise in teaching social science methods’ to future teachers. He has held appointments at UW Stephens Point and Illinois State University; worked in research and educational administration in Sweden, England, Ireland, Myanmar and the UAE. Michael was also awarded a Fulbright-Hayes scholarship to Ghana collaborating with the University of Cape Coast on Teacher Training in history.

Michael is currently an educational researcher and consultant and has been a dissertation advisor for graduate students with the Education Doctoral Program at Edgewood College School of Education in Madison, Wisconsin.

Rab Houston

Professor Rab Houston was an undergraduate at St Andrews and, after six years in Cambridge as a research student and research fellow, came back as a lecturer in Modern History in 1983. He has held visiting professorships at the universities of Adelaide and Erasmus, Rotterdam as well as visiting fellowships at the Huntington Library and the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. Between 2006 and 2009 he held a prestigious Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Member of the Academia Europaea, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Rab has written ten books, co-authored one, and edited another four as well as authoring eighty articles and book chapters, most of them in the fields of early modern British and European literacy, British demography and urbanisation, Scottish society, and the history of mental abnormality.

Outside academia Rab is a keen scuba diver, often to be seen diving wrecks off the east coast of Scotland – or visiting warmer waters around the world. He enjoys yoga and Tai Chi, both active forms of meditation.

Jennifer Paxton

Jennifer Paxton has taught the history of the British Isles and Ireland for the past seventeen years, first at Georgetown and then at the Catholic University of America, where she is currently the director of the University Honors Program. She earned her B.A. in history at Yale and her Ph.D. in medieval history at Harvard, where she also did course work in the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures. Dr. Paxton has produced  several lecture series for Wondrium (formerly The Great Courses) on medieval British history and  the Celtic World. She lectures regularly on Irish, Scottish, and British history for Smithsonian Associates.

Cathal Nolan

Cathal J. Nolan is Professor of History at Boston University. He was born in Ireland but grew up in Canada, two countries with close links to Scotland: one just across the water, the other a land explored and very often governed by Scots. He has Scots ancestors on his mother’s side, from clan Gordon. He is a multiple award-winning teacher who offers courses on European military history and War in Literature and Film. He has toured Scotland from Glasgow to Edinburgh, the Lowlands to the Highlands, taking in sites from military history but also those of cultural and political importance. He has touched the shores of Loch Lomond and Loch Ness, admired snow-topped Ben Nevis and steep, fog and sheep filled valleys. He has visited with ghosts haunting a terrible defeat at Culloden Moor, and a terrible victory at Stirling Bridge. His 2018 book The Allure of Battle (Oxford UP), received the Gilder Lehrman Prize as “the best book on military history in the English-speaking world distinguished by its scholarship, contribution to the literature, and appeal to both a general and an academic audience.” His most recent book is more personal, wrenching in a different way: Mercy: Humanity in War (Oxford UP, 2023). Prior books included a two volume History of World War II; a history of the Wars of the Age of Louis XIV, and a study of Ethics in International Affairs now in its third edition. His two volume history of the Wars of Religion covers the Protestant-Catholic wars in England, Scotland and Ireland, and other Scots wars from William Wallace and Robert the Bruce to the Jacobite Rebellion. He consults on historical issues to the PBS series NOVA, and is principal history adviser to the American Heritage Museum.

Miriam C. Davis

Miriam Davis is an expert in medieval history and archaeology. After graduating from Emory University, Miriam studied history and archaeology at the University of St Andrews on a Bobby Jones Scholarship. She went on to earn an MA in medieval archaeology from the University of York on a Fulbright grant, and a Ph.D. in medieval history from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has participated in archaeological excavations in Mississippi, Alabama, England, and Scotland. Currently, Miriam is a freelance writer. She has written for the popular press on archaeology, history, and travel and has lectured throughout the U.S., Great Britain, and Israel. Her work has also been featured on The Travel Channel. As a history professor at Delta State University for 16 years, she taught a wide variety of courses, including ancient and medieval history, the Renaissance and Reformation, English history, and the history of Christianity. Miriam is the author of Dame Kathleen Kenyon: Digging Up the Holy Land and The Axeman of New Orleans: The True Story. She has served as a Smithsonian Journeys Expert for trips since 2011.