)
2026 Solar Eclipse Cruise:
Totality in The Mediterraneanwith Sarah Rugheimer
FRANCE & SPAIN
_-_geograph.org.uk_-_6277419%201-v1.jpg)
Great Music Masters of Italy: Verdi and Italian Opera
with Robert Greenberg
ITALY
ENGLAND & FRANCE
D-Day: Courage, Conflict, and History in England and France with Ed Lengel
Great Music Masters of Vienna: The Romantics
with Robert Greenberg
Enchanted England: Folklore, Fairy Tales, and Wonder
with Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman
Revisiting World War 1 in France
with Keith Huxen
Exploring Cuba: From Trinidad
to Havana
with Joyce Salisbury
Great British Mysteries: Conan Doyle, Christie, and More
ENGLAND
ENGLAND
FRANCE
CUBA
AUSTRIA
Travel with Insight, Explore with Passion
CLOSE MENU
%20(4)-v1.png)
Travel with Insight, Explore with Passion
These folks “wrote the book”—or, in this case, taught the course—on the experiences offered by The Great Courses Journeys.
The Great Courses Journeys Expert Leaders
Meet the
Read More
Joyce E. Salisbury is Professor Emerita of Humanistic Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, where she taught history and served as associate dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences and director of International Education. She earned her Ph.D. in Medieval History at Rutgers University, specializing in religious and social history.
Professor Salisbury began her career performing research in Spain, and she has continued to travel there to conduct further research, lecture, and guide students and other travelers. She is currently working on a book about the history of early Christian martyrdom.
In addition to receiving the University of Wisconsin’s Outstanding Teaching award, she was named Professor of the Year in 1991 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. She has taught three times on Semester at Sea, a study-abroad program on a ship that circumnavigates the world with more than 500 students for a full semester.
Professor Salisbury is a prolific author whose books include the award-winning Perpetua’s Passion: Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman; The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages; Rome’s Christian Empress: Galla Placidia Rules at the Twilight of the Empire; and the widely used textbook The West in the World. She has been interviewed many times on National Public Radio on topics from religion to the books she has written, and she appeared on the PBS special The Road from Christ to Constantine.
Joyce Salisbury
Patrick Allitt
Patrick N. Allitt is Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University, where he has taught since 1988. He has led student and adult tours abroad for decades. Professor Allitt received his PhD in American History from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Divinity School and Princeton University. He is a widely published author whose books include A Climate of Crisis: America in the Age of Environmentalism; The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities throughout American History; and Religion in America since 1945: A History. Professor Allitt has created more than 10 Great Courses, including The Industrial Revolution; The American West: History, Myth, and Legacy; and The Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales.
Pamela Bedore
Pamela Bedore is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. She has taught courses in Sherlock Holmes, American Detective Fiction, The Monster in Literature and Culture, Stephen King, and much more. Professor Bedore was the winner of AAUP (American Association of University Professors) Excellence Awards in Teaching Promise and then in Teaching Innovation. She has published widely on science fiction, detective fiction, and writing administration in such journals as Foundations: The International Review of Science Fiction, Studies in Popular Culture, and Writing Program Administrator, and is the book review editor for Clues: A Journal of Detection. Her first book, Dime Novels and the Roots of American Detective Fiction, was published in 2013. Professor Bedore earned her PhD from the University of Rochester. For The Great Courses, she created Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature.
Karen Bellinger
Karen Bellinger is an anthropologist, archaeologist, and historian who has investigated sites in Europe, Africa, and North and South America, exploring human mysteries from prehistory through the 21st century. Much of her research has focused on early modern European culture and society, and its colonial expansion throughout the Atlantic World from the 16th through 21st centuries. Professor Bellinger presents and consults for a wide range of history programs on media outlets such as National Geographic and the Science Channel. Committed to public archaeology and everyday learning, she created a Scholastic and Parents’ Choice award-winning time travel adventure game called The Time Tribe, develops interactive visitor experiences for museums and heritage sites, and writes multimedia historical fiction. She earned her PhD in anthropology from New York University. Professor Bellinger has worked with many universities and heritage institutions, including the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the College of William & Mary, Queen Mary University of London, the Museum of London, Plimoth Plantation, Yale educational travel, and primary schools in the U.S. and U.K. For The Great Courses, Professor Bellinger is developing a course on great archaeological mysteries.
Alissa Branch
Alissa Branch is an Associate Professor of Acting in the Helmerich School of Drama at the University of Oklahoma, where she created an advanced Shakespeare performance curriculum. She also serves as the Associate Artistic Director for the professional theatre company, Oklahoma Shakespeare. Born in Hastings, England, and raised in Oklahoma, Professor Branch discovered her love of storytelling at an early age and has presented acting/audition workshops in theatres and educational settings across the United States, the UK, and in South Africa. As an actor and director, her productions have several national awards. Her directorial credits include Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Twelfth Night, among other plays. Professor Branch has studied acting at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and Shakespeare’s Globe, and she earned her MA in Drama from Washington University in St. Louis. For The Great Courses, she created Experiencing Shakespeare: From Page to Stage.
Robert Bucholz
Robert Bucholz is Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, where he has taught since 1988. He is a leading authority on the history of the British court, the social history of early modern England, and the emergence of London as global cultural center during and after the 16th century. Professor Bucholz has appeared frequently as a public speaker and in local, national, and international media outlets to comment on historical and royal topics ranging from the Tudors to the Titanic, plague and fire in London to royal births, weddings and funerals. Professor Bucholz is also the project director of the Database of Court Officers, which contains the career facts of every person who served in the British royal household from the Restoration to the death of Queen Victoria. He earned his D.Phil. in Modern History from Oxford University. He is the author or coauthor of several books on English history, including Early Modern England: A Narrative History and The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture. His Great Courses include A History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts, The Foundations of Western Civilization II: A History of the Modern Western World, and London: A Short History of the Greatest City in the Western World.
Sara Cleto
Sara Cleto is a folklorist, teacher, and writer based in Atlanta, Georgia. She earned her PhD in English and Folklore from the Ohio State University writing her dissertation on folklore and disability. Sara has authored and coauthored dozens of articles, academic reviews, and conference papers and has lectured at venues across the US and the UK, including The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts and The American Folklore Society. She is also cofounder of The Carterhaugh School, which won the Dorothy Howard Prize from the American Folklore Society for their work in bringing scholarly rigor to the field of fantasy literature.
Maureen Corrigan is the Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism at Georgetown University. She received her PhD in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the book critic for the NPR program Fresh Air and has received multiple awards for her literary criticism. She also regularly writes for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal and is the author of the literary memoir Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading and So We Read On: How “The Great Gatsby” Came to Be and Why It Endures. She is the expert presenter for the Great Course Banned Books, Burned Books: Forbidden Literary Works which traces the history of book banning and censorship in the English-speaking world and see why it continues today.
Maureen Corrigan
Monica S. Cyrino
Monica S. Cyrino is a Professor of Classics at the University of New Mexico. Her research centers on Greek and Roman poetry, Aphrodite and Ancient eros, and Classical portrayals in film and television. Professor Cyrino has led student tours through Greece and Italy and frequently gives talks around the world on classics and popular culture in addition to serving as an academic consultant for numerous feature films and television productions. An esteemed teacher, she’s won numerous teaching awards including the national Society for Classical Studies’ Excellence in Teaching Classics Award, UNM’s Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award, the Presidential Teaching Fellowship Award, the College of Arts & Sciences Teaching Award, and the UNM Alumni Association Faculty Teaching Award. Professor Cyrino is the author of many popular and academic books, including the widely used textbook, A Journey Through Greek Mythology. She earned her PhD in Classical Philology at Yale University. For the Great Courses, Professor Cyrino created an Audible Original Sex Scandals of Ancient Greece and Rome.
Eamonn Gearon
Eamonn Gearon is an author and historian. He has spent decades living and working across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), including leading tours and taking solo, camel-powered explorations of the Sahara. Professor Gearon relishes his role of public historian and speaker, and his work that blends history, culture, and contemporary affairs. He has taught at the Universities of Oxford, Johns Hopkins-SAIS, in Washington DC, and the American University in Cairo. Professor Gearon has created and run MENA training for both the US Department of State and Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office for more than a decade. He has a DPhil in History from Oxford University. Eamonn is the author of The Sahara: A Cultural History (2011); The Arab Bureau: The Story of Britain’s Most Ingenious Intelligence Unit (Nov. 2025); and Lawrence of Arabia: A Love Story (2026), which last title also forms the basis of a one-man show. His Great Courses include The History and Achievements of the Islamic Golden Age, Turning Points in Middle Eastern History, and The Middle East in the 20th Century.
Robert Greenberg is Music Historian-in-Residence with San Francisco Performances. A graduate of Princeton University, Professor Greenberg holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of California, Berkeley. He has seen his compositions–which include more than 45 works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles–performed all over the world, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, England, Ireland, Greece, Italy, and the Netherlands.
He has served on the faculties of the University of California, Berkeley; California State University, Hayward; and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and has lectured for some of the most prestigious musical and arts organizations in the United States, including the San Francisco Symphony, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Van Cliburn Foundation, and the Chicago Symphony. For The Great Courses, he has recorded more than 500 lectures on a range of composers and classical music genres.
Professor Greenberg is a Steinway Artist. His many other honors include three Nicola de Lorenzo Composition Prizes and a Koussevitzky commission from the Library of Congress. He has been profiled in various major publications, including The Wall Street Journal; Inc. magazine; and the London Times.
Robert Greenberg
Keith Huxen
Keith Huxen is the Senior Historian at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation in support of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and was previously the Senior Director of Research and History in the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at The National WWII Museum. An expert in 20th-century military and diplomatic history, Professor Huxen has extensive experience leading tours and delivering lectures at battle and historical sites in Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, China, and Taiwan. He has taught at Arizona State University, the University of New Orleans, and Louisiana State University. Professor Huxen holds a PhD degree in American history from George Washington University, specializing in the diplomatic, military, and international history of the 20th century. He has published articles on military history in numerous academic journals and created World War II: Up Close and Personal for The Great Courses.
Jean-Pierre Isbouts
Jean-Pierre Isbouts is a historian, biblical scholar, author, and filmmaker. He is faculty emeritus at Fielding Graduate University, where he served for 15 years as a member of the doctoral faculty. Professor Isbouts has led tours for several decades to Europe, the Middle East, and beyond, and delivered public talks all over the world. A best-selling author, he gained worldwide renown with his National Geographic book The Biblical World and also wrote Archaeology of the Bible, In the Footsteps of Jesus, and The Dead Sea Scrolls, which has sold more than 2 million copies. Together with Christopher Heath Brown, he is co-author of three books on Leonardo da Vinci: The da Vinci Legacy, The Mona Lisa Myth and Young Leonardo. Professor Isbouts has been on numerous radio and TV shows and hosted the TV series In Search of Masterpieces. Born in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, he earned his DLitt at Leiden University. His Great Courses include The History and Archaeology of the Bible (produced in partnership with National Geographic), In the Footsteps of van Gogh, Searching for the Historical Jesus, and Searching for People and Places of the Bible.
Ed G. Lengel
Ed G. Lengel is a professional author, public speaker, and historical tour guide. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia, where he was a full professor and directed the Washington Papers Project for many years. He served as Chief Historian of the White House Historical Association, wrote the new history of Colonial Williamsburg as a Revolutionary in Residence, and worked at the National World War II and Medal of Honor Museums.
Mr. Lengel has written 14 books on American history, including To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918 and Never in Finer Company: The Men of the Great War’s Lost Battalion. Mr. Lengel is a co-recipient of the National Humanities Medal and has won two writing awards from the Army Historical Foundation. He has made frequent television and radio appearances on The History Channel, SiriusXM, National Public Radio, and many other media outlets.
Eve MacDonald
Eve MacDonald is a Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at Cardiff University. Professor MacDonald teaches on a range of topics related to the Roman Empire, the Parthian and Sasanian worlds, and Carthage. She has travelled and worked widely across the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Ancient Near East, and finds inspiration in all different periods and cultures that make up the global ancient worlds, especially those outside the traditional Greco-Roman narrative. In addition, Professor MacDonald researches the archaeological legacy of 19th and 20th-century colonial occupation in North Africa. She has worked extensively in the field, including excavations in Italy, Tunisia, Oman, Georgia, and Iran. Her first book was Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life, followed by a co-authored book, Archaeological History of Carthage. Professor MacDonald earned her PhD in Ancient History from the University of Ottawa. For The Great Courses, she created Hannibal: The Military Genius Who Almost Conquered Rome.
James Pfrehm
James Pfrehm is an independent scholar who taught German language, literature, and culture at the university level for more than 20 years. He has a deep passion for sharing his love of German and Austrian cultures. In addition to studying and conducting research in Germany and Austria, Professor Pfrehm has led many student tours to both countries. As an associate professor at Ithaca College, he was recognized for his outstanding teaching and commitment to his students. He has a PhD in Germanic Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Professor Pfrehm is the author of the book Technolingualism: The Mind and the Machine. For The Great Courses, he has created both The Great Tours: Germany and Austria and Learning German: A Journey through Language and Culture.
Rosana Resende
Rosana Resende is Chair of the Western Hemisphere Area Studies Division, Foreign Service Institute, of the US Department of State. Fluent in Spanish (and Portuguese), Professor Resende is a Latin America expert who chairs training curriculum for U.S. foreign affairs community working in or on Western Hemisphere countries. Previously, she taught for 12 years at the University of Florida Center for Latin American Studies. By training, Professor Resende is a cultural anthropologist whose research interests focus on the differentiated impacts of globalization and neoliberalism on the lived experiences of Latin Americans across social sectors. Specifically, her work addresses questions of migration, urbanization, labor, and tourism as encounters, and she has been the recipient of both institutional and national awards. Professor Resende received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Florida. She is working on a course on the world of Latin America for The Great Courses.
Sarah Rugheimer
Sarah Rugheimer is an astrophysicist and the Allan I Carswell Chair at York University in Toronto. Her work is focused on how to detect life on an exoplanet by looking for atmospheric biosignatures and her research interests are modelling the atmosphere and climate of extrasolar planets, with a particular focus on atmospheric biosignatures in Earth-like planets, as well as modelling early Earth conditions.
Sarah earned her bachelor’s degree in physics at the University of Calgary, and her MA and PhD at Harvard in Astrophysics. She then took the Simons Origins of Life Research Fellowship at St. Andrews, followed by a Glasstone Research Fellowship at Oxford. In addition to research, Sarah is interested public outreach. Her TED talk “The Search for Microscopic Aliens” has 1.7 million views on TED.com. She previously has been awarded the Barrie Jones Award and the BSA Rosalind Franklin Lectureship in 2019, and the Caroline Herschel Lectureship Prize in 2018. Her astrobiology course for the public is available on Amazon Audible Originals, partnered with the Great Courses, called Searching for Extraterrestrial Life. Partnering with the Great Courses again, she is releasing a course on the wonders we are discovering with JWST in 2025.
Joyce E. Salisbury
Joyce E. Salisbury is a Professor Emerita of Humanistic Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. She Salisbury began her career conducting research in Spain and has led tours there for several decades. Professor Salisbury has appeared on PBS specials and on the History Channel. In addition, she has been invited to lecture in many venues around the world for her ability to bring the past alive. Professor Salisbury has been widely recognized for her teaching abilities, including being named Professor of the Year in 1991 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. She has taught three times on Semester at Sea, a study-abroad program on a ship that circumnavigates the world with more than 500 students for a full semester. Professor Salisbury earned her Ph.D. in Medieval History at Rutgers University, specializing in religious and social history. She has written more than 10 books, including the widely used textbook, The West in the World; and created 4 Great Courses: The History of Spain: Land on a Crossroad, Warriors, Queens, and Intellectuals: 36 Great Women Before 1400, The Middle Ages Around the World, and The Story of the Mediterranean World.
David Stone
David R. Stone is the William E. Odom Professor of Russian Studies at the U.S. Naval War College. He received his Ph.D. in History from Yale University. He has written or edited several books on military history, including Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union, 1926–1933, which won the ASEEES Marshall D. Shulman Book Prize and the Historical Society Best First Book Prize. He is also the author of dozens of articles on Russian military history and foreign policy, and he is the expert presenter of the course World War II: Battlefield Europe.
80th Anniversary of D-Day
Carol Symes
Carol Symes is an Associate Professor of History, Theatre, Classics, and Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has taught courses extensively in Medieval England, Medieval civilization, Shakespeare, and Shakespeare’s England. Professor Symes’s research focuses on medieval and premodern media of communication, including histories and performance texts. She is the founding executive editor of the journal The Medieval Globe, on the interconnectedness of the Medieval world. An ongoing research project of hers, Shakespeare in Chains, explores how the experience of enclosure, vagabondage, criminalization, and incarceration shaped the actors, audiences, and plays of Tudor-Stuart England. A professional actor and theater practitioner, she trained at the Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol, England. Professor Symes’s book A Common Stage: Theatre and Public Life in Medieval Arras earned the American Historical Association’s Herbert Baxter Adams Prize, among other honors. She is also co-author of the bestselling Western Civilizations. Professor Symes earned her PhD in History from Harvard University. For The Great Courses, she created The Medieval Legacy.
Steven L. Tuck
Steven L. Tuck is Professor of History and Classics at Miami University. He has conducted archaeological fieldwork and research in Italy, Greece, England, and Egypt, and has directed more than 20 study tours in Italy, concentrated on the city of Rome and the area around the Bay of Naples, including Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the Island of Capri. Professor Tuck received the 2013 E. Phillips Knox Teaching Award, Miami University’s highest honor for innovative and effective undergraduate teaching. In addition, the Archaeological Institute of America, North America’s oldest and largest organization devoted to archaeology, presented him with its Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2014. He received his Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan. Professor Tuck is the author of A History of Roman Art and has taught several Great Courses, including Pompeii: Daily Life in an Ancient Roman City, Experiencing Rome: A Visual Exploration of Antiquity’s Greatest Empire, The Mysterious Etruscans, The Architecture of Power: Great Palaces of the Ancient World, and Cities of the Ancient World.
Brittany Warman
Brittany Warman is a folklorist, teacher, writer, and a cofounder of The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic. Based out of the Washington, DC, metro area, she earned her PhD in English and Folklore from the Ohio State University writing her dissertation on fairy tales and Gothic literature. Brittany has authored and coauthored multiple academic articles and book chapters and has lectured at venues across the US and the UK, including the Smithsonian, FaerieCon, and The Folklore Podcast. The Carterhaugh School won the Dorothy Howard Prize from the American Folklore Society for their work in bringing scholarly rigor to the field of fantasy literature.
Darius Arya is the Director of the American Institute for Roman Culture. He has led excavations, including at the Roman site of Ostia Antica, and taught university programs in Italy. He is also a Fulbright Scholar, a fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and a guest scholar of the Getty Conservation Institute. He has appeared on HISTORY®, National Geographic, and Discovery, as well as BBC Radio 4 and CNN, and he hosted the PBS series Ancient Invisible Cities.
Dr. Robert Greenberg is Music Historian-in-Residence with San Francisco Performances. A graduate of Princeton University, Professor Greenberg holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of California, Berkeley. He has seen his compositions–which include more than 45 works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles–performed all over the world, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, England, Ireland, Greece, Italy, and the Netherlands.
He has served on the faculties of the University of California, Berkeley; California State University, Hayward; and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and has lectured for some of the most prestigious musical and arts organizations in the United States, including the San Francisco Symphony, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Van Cliburn Foundation, and the Chicago Symphony. For The Great Courses, he has recorded more than 500 lectures on a range of composers and classical music genres.
Professor Greenberg is a Steinway Artist. His many other honors include three Nicola de Lorenzo Composition Prizes and a Koussevitzky commission from the Library of Congress. He has been profiled in various major publications, including The Wall Street Journal; Inc. magazine; and the London Times.
Khristin N. Montes is an Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts. She is a broadly trained art historian with additional background in anthropology, archaeology, and museum studies. Her specific areas of research include Maya and Aztec art and architecture, Indigenous American visual culture and research methodologies, and intersections between art production and social justice. Dr. Montes has recently published on exhibition practices involving Native American, Maya, and African objects in museums; sacred landscapes and architecture in the Maya world; and on the importance of decolonizing college and university-level art history curriculum. Before joining Regis University, she was the Project Facilitator for the Cultural Heritage, Ecology, and Conservation of Yucatec Cenotes Project–a cultural and environmental sustainability and educational project that took place in nine Maya communities between 2018 and 2020. The “Cenotes Project” was jointly organized through InHerit (Indigenous Heritage Passed to Present) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Universidad de Oriente in Valladolid, Yucatán, Mexico, and sponsored by the National Geographic Society. Dr. Montes holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Chicago and M.A.s from Northern Illinois University.
Jennifer Paxton is a Clinical Associate Professor of History at The Catholic University of America. She is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies and director of the University Honors Program. She was previously a Professorial Lecturer in History at Georgetown University, where she taught for more than a decade. Jennifer received her Ph.D. in History from Harvard University, where she also taught and earned a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching. She is a widely published, award-winning writer and a highly regarded scholar, earning both a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities and a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship.
Jennifer lectures regularly at the Smithsonian Institution and serves as an expert on Scotland and Ireland programs for Smithsonian. Her research focuses on England from the reign of King Alfred to the late 12th century. She is particularly interested in the intersection between the authority of church and state and the representation of the past in historical texts, especially those produced by religious communities. She is completing a book that examines how monastic historians shaped their narratives to project present polemical concerns onto the past. She is also working on a project that examines changing views of abbatial leadership across the Anglo-Norman world in the 11th and 12th centuries.
Joyce E. Salisbury is Professor Emerita of Humanistic Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, where she taught history and served as associate dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences and director of International Education. She earned her Ph.D. in Medieval History at Rutgers University, specializing in religious and social history.
Professor Salisbury began her career performing research in Spain, and she has continued to travel there to conduct further research, lecture, and guide students and other travelers. She is currently working on a book about the history of early Christian martyrdom.
In addition to receiving the University of Wisconsin’s Outstanding Teaching award, she was named Professor of the Year in 1991 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. She has taught three times on Semester at Sea, a study-abroad program on a ship that circumnavigates the world with more than 500 students for a full semester.
Professor Salisbury is a prolific author whose books include the award-winning Perpetua’s Passion: Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman; The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages; Rome’s Christian Empress: Galla Placidia Rules at the Twilight of the Empire; and the widely used textbook The West in the World. She has been interviewed many times on National Public Radio on topics from religion to the books she has written, and she appeared on the PBS special The Road from Christ to Constantine.
An award-winning professor, Dr. Sarah Rugheimer is an astrobiologist and astrphysicist at Jesus College Oxford. Her research focuses on the atmospheric composition of exoplanets, and ways of detecting life. After completing her Ph.D. in 2015, she received a three-year Simons Origin of Life Fellowship, which she undertook at the University of St Andrews. Dr. Rugheimer’s accomplishments include the 2018 Caroline Herschel Prize winner for Promising Female Junior Astronomer in the UK, the Rosalind Franklin Award Lecture for Physical Sciences and Mathematics by the British Science Association, The Barrie Jones Award Lecture, and being selected as a TED Fellow.
Dr. Rugheimer earned her bachelor's degree in physics at the University of Calgary. She completed her master’s and Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Harvard University. She co-hosts a podcast with Dr. Sarah Ballard, called 'Self-care with Drs. Sarah,' which covers topics such as women in science and navigating academic careers.
Dr. Stuart Sutherland is a Professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at The University of British Columbia (UBC). Raised in the United Kingdom, he earned an undergraduate degree in geology from the University of Plymouth and a Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from the University of Leicester for his studies on Silurian microfossils called chitinozoa. Professor Sutherland discovered his passion for teaching during an appointment at Brunel University in London. He went on to postdoctoral research at the Natural History Museum in London, working with other paleontologists to understand the Devonian organic-walled microfossils of the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain. During this time, he completed a postgraduate teaching degree at Sheffield Hallam University. Since 2000, Professor Sutherland has been on the faculty at UBC’s Vancouver campus, where his interests center on Earth history and paleontology. He is a three-time winner of the UBC Earth and Ocean Sciences Teaching Award. He also received the Faculty of Science Teaching Award and the Killam Teaching Prize, and he was named a “popular professor” in two editions of Maclean’s Guide to Canadian Universities. Dr. Sutherland is the professor of two popular Wondrium courses: A New History of Life and Paleontology.
Enter your name and email and we will keep you up to date on trips that are coming soon. PLUS, you will be able to download a digital version of our beautiful full color 2025-2026 travel catalog.
Get updates on NEW destinations and a FREE catalog right to your inbox.
