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Faculty Lecturers

About Our Faculty

Many Tar Heel Travel trips feature lectures by our award-winning faculty. Read more below about faculty members who have traveled with us recently or who are scheduled to travel on 2023 tours.

**Please note, faculty participation is based upon achieving a required minimum number of travelers per tour.

Peter Coclanis - Romance of the Douro

Peter A. Coclanis is Albert R. Newsome Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Global Research Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill.   He is a native of Chicago and took his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1984, joining the History Department at UNC that same year.  He is a specialist in the field of economic history and has published extensively in that area.  He was formerly Chair of the History Department at UNC and from 2003 through 2009 Associate Provost for International Affairs.  In addition to teaching at UNC, he has held visiting appointments at Columbia, Harvard, and the National University of Singapore.  Over the years he has lectured on a number of GAA tours, including trips to Spain, Russia, the Baltic, Southeast Asia, and China.    He is the proud father of two UNC grads.

Peter will serve as enrichment lecturer on Romance of the Douro, Oct. 3 – 14, 2023, with a minimum of 10 UNC travelers.

Lloyd Kramer - Normandy

Lloyd Kramer’s interests focus on Modern European History with an emphasis on nineteenth-century France. He is particularly interested in historical processes that shape cultural identities, including the experiences of cross-cultural exchange and the emergence of modern nationalism. Other research and teaching interests deal with the roles of intellectuals in modern societies and the theoretical foundations of historical knowledge. His teaching stresses the importance of reading, discussing, and writing about influential books in various eras of European history and world history. One recurring theme in all of his research and teaching stresses the importance of cross-cultural exchanges in modern world history.  Lloyd is also the Faculty Director of Carolina Public Humanities.

Lloyd will serve as enrichment lecturer on Normandy, June 3 – 11, 2023, with a minimum of 10 UNC travelers.

Don Raleigh - Cruise the Heart of Europe

Donald J. Raleigh is the Jay Richard Judson Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  He has authored, translated, and edited numerous books on modern Russian history including Revolution on the Volga (1986), Experiencing Russia’s Civil War (2002), Russia’s Sputnik Generation (2006), and Soviet Baby Boomers (2012), a Russian-language edition of which was published in 2015.

The book was short listed for the Pushkin House Prize in Great Britain and won the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies Book Prize.  His current research project, a biography of Soviet leader Leonid Ilich Brezhnev, has taken him to archives in Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, and Russia.  Raleigh joined the faculty at UNC in 1988.  Since then, he has supervised 33 MA theses and 26 PhD dissertations, and has served on dozens of other thesis and dissertation committees.  In 2002 he received the Distinguished Teaching Award for Post-Baccalaureate Instruction; in 2016 the Faculty Award for Excellence in Doctoral Mentoring; and in 2020 the UNC Women’s Leadership Council Graduate Mentoring Award.  In the fall of 2021, the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies awarded him its  Distinguished Contributions to Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Award.

Don will serve as enrichment lecturer on Cruise the Heart of EuropeMay 5 – 20, 2023, with a minimum of 10 UNC travelers.

Kevin Stewart - Alpine Splendor

Kevin Stewart is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences at UNC- Chapel Hill. He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and his research is focused on the evolution of mountain belts, including the Rocky Mountains of Montana and Wyoming, the Apennines of Italy, and the Appalachians. Stewart’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society, and the U.S. Geological Survey. He has won the James M. Johnston Teaching Excellence Award, the Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, a Chapman Fellowship for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Walter H. Wheeler Award for Excellence in Teaching.  He is also the co-author of Exploring the Geology of the Carolinas from UNC Press. He has served as UNC enrichment lecturer on previous alumni tours to Alaska, Iceland, Norway, the Galapagos, and national parks of the western United States.

Kevin will serve as enrichment lecturer on Alpine SplendorMay 18 – 31, 2023, with a minimum of 10 UNC travelers.

Brent Wissick - Cruise the Rhine and Mosel

Brent Wissick (Professor) has taught cello, chamber music, and viola da gamba at UNC since 1982. Over a long career, he has played concerts throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia with groups including American Bach Soloists, Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Ensemble Chanterelle, Atlanta Symphony, Boston Early Music Festival, Folger Consort, Smithsonian Chamber Players, Concert Royal, Dallas Bach Society, Parthenia and Wroclaw Baroque in Poland. Recordings can be heard on the Albany, Centaur, Erato, Koch, and Acis labels among others; three of them Grammy-nominated. His online article “The Cello Music of Bononcini” can be viewed in the peer-reviewed Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music and several of his teaching videos are posted on the website of the Viola da Gamba Society of America website. He served as President of that group from 2000-04, chaired the Pan-Pacific Gathering in Hawaii in 2007, and was awarded Lifetime Membership in 2020. His article about the “Coprario Six-Part Pieces” will be published in the VdGSA Journal in 2021.

Brent will serve as enrichment lecturer on Cruise the Rhine and MoselJuly 20 – 31, 2023, with a minimum of 10 UNC travelers.