Alan Gallay joins the TCU faculty as the Lyndon B. Johnson Chair in U.S. History. He received his B.A. from the University of Florida, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Georgetown University. Gallay comes to us from Ohio State University, where he held the Warner R. Woodring Chair in Atlantic World and Early American history and was Director of The Center for Historical Research. Twice the recipient of year-long fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Gallay also held appointments as a Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard University and as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

A specialist in colonial history, particularly in the history of the South, Native America, slavery, and religion, Gallay is author and editor of numerous essays and books. His most recent books are Colonial and Revolutionary America (Prentice Hall, 2010) and Indian Slavery in Colonial America (Nebraska, 2009), a Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title. His best known book, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717 (Yale, 2002), received the Bancroft Prize, the Washington State Book Award, and other accolades, including selection by Library Journal as one of the ten most important books on American Indians published over the previous thirty years.

A frequent public speaker, Gallay has given talks around the world and throughout the United States at universities, museums, and a variety of other public venues, including twice on board ship as a Smithsonian Institution Study Leader. Locales for his talks have ranged from Tasmania to Istanbul, from Seville to Edinburgh, and from Green Bay to New York City, as well as Harvard and Yale.

His newest essay, to be published later this year, is titled, “Defining the European Frontier City in Early Modern Asia: Goa, Macau, and Manila,” in Frontier Cities in the Early Modern World, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Gallay spent last winter in Europe conducting research for a book titled, “Ralegh and the Origins of English Colonialism.” This work documents the convergence of religious, economic, political, military, cultural, and scientific forces that led England to colonize overseas in the 16th century. It includes an important comparative element, as Gallay documents the simultaneous English colonization of Roanoke with Ireland and Guiana.