Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Distinguished Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, was named vice president and president-elect of the World History Association. She will serve for two years as vice president and president-elect and then become president of the association in 2018.
The World History Association was founded in 1982 and is now based at Northeastern University in Boston. According to its mission statement, the World History Association “supports and works to advance scholarship and teaching within a trans-national, trans-regional, and trans-cultural perspective. The WHA fosters historical analysis undertaken not from the viewpoint of nation-states, discrete regions, or particular cultures, but from that of the human community.”
Dr. Wiesner-Hanks has been on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee since 1985 and was promoted to full professor in 1994. Earlier, she taught for six years at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois.
Professor Wiesner-Hanks is the author of numerous books including The Renaissance and Reformation: A History in Documents (Oxford University Press, 2012) and The Marvelous Hairy Girls: The Gonzales Sisters and their Worlds (Yale University Press, 2009). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.