Rob Citino is an award-winning military historian and scholar who has published 11 books, including The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand: The German Campaigns of 1944-1945; The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943; and The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich. In 2021, he won the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society for Military History for lifetime achievement in the field. Citino graduated magna cum laude with a BA in history from Ohio State University and earned his MA and PhD from Indiana University. He enjoys close ties with the US military establishment and has taught at the US Military Academy at West Point and the US Army War College. He was a professor of history at North Texas University, Lake Erie College, and Eastern Michigan University. Citino joined The National WWII Museum in 2016 as the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian before serving as Executive Director of the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. Though he retired in 2023, he remains active in the Institute as a Distinguished Fellow. 

Yan Mann is an associate clinical professor of history and the program lead of the World War II Studies master’s degree program and the Holocaust & Genocide graduate certificate at Arizona State University. He is the co-editor of The Eastern Front: War, Myth, and Memory in which he authored the chapter “The Forgotten: Challenging Brezhnev's Cult of the Great Patriotic War.” Mann is also the author of chapters “Situating Stalin in the history of the Second World War” (The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia) and “Manufactured Memory: Crafting the Cult of the Great Patriotic War” (Terrortimes, Terrorscapes: Continuities of Space, Time, and Memory in Twentieth-Century War and Genocide). His research revolves around the relationship between individual and collective memory of the Great Patriotic War, the Stalin cult, censorship, propaganda, and the production of the war’s first official history during Khrushchev’s thaw. Mann specializes in World War II, the Soviet Union, and war and society. 

Bradley W. Hart is a Senior Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. He is the author of two books, including the award-winning Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States (2018). Hart has also published more than 20 articles and book chapters on topics including interwar politics, prewar diplomacy, and intelligence history. He frequently appears on television, radio, and podcasts. His current research focuses on information warfare and espionage before and during World War II. Before joining the Institute, Hart taught at California State University, Fresno and worked as an international affairs fellow on Capitol Hill. He received his PhD in history from Churchill College, University of Cambridge, as well as his MLitt in modern history from the University of St. Andrews and a BA in history and philosophy at California State University, Fresno. 

Volker Benkert is an associate professor at Arizona State University. His research focuses on the impact of sudden regime change on biographies in 20th-century Germany and Europe. He graduated with a master’s degree from the University of Bonn and a doctorate from the University of Potsdam. 

Hannah Dailey is the Senior Oral Historian at The National WWII Museum. She holds a BA in history and an MA in military and diplomatic history from the University of New Orleans. Since joining the Museum, she has traveled the country extensively to conduct more than 700 oral history interviews with WWII veterans and Holocaust survivors, significantly expanding the collection. Several of Dailey’s interviews to date are showcased in the Museum’s permanent exhibits. 

Jason Dawsey is an assistant teaching professor at Arizona State University. He previously was a Research Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, where he researched the service records of WWII veterans and wrote their biographies for family members. A native of Columbia, Mississippi, Dawsey received his PhD in 2013 from the University of Chicago. He has taught at the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Beyond his research on World War II, his interests include the history of the European Left, debates about the impact of technology on modern life, and the history of Holocaust consciousness. 

Haley Guepet is the Research Fellow at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. She completed her PhD in history in 2025 at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, where she taught undergraduate courses on Vikings and humans’ relationships with the ocean. She received a BA in history and English literature from Louisiana State University in 2016. Guepet also received her JD in civil law from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law in 2019 and is an attorney in Louisiana. She is a frequent contributor to The National WWII Museum’s website and has traveled with students to France on the Museum’s Normandy Academy program. Her current research focuses on war crimes tribunals at Nuremberg and women’s roles on the American Home Front. 

Toni Kiser is the Senior Registrar & Director of Collections Management at The National WWII Museum. She oversees all aspects of registration and collection management and has worked on varied projects from large exhibit installations, digitization projects, storage moves, artifact rehousing, and cataloging and nomenclature standards. She is the author of Loyal Forces: American Animals in WWII and co-editor of Museum Registration Methods, 6th edition. Kiser has served on the Board for the Association of Registrars and Collection Specialists. She holds a BA in history from Brevard College and an MA in museum studies from The George Washington University. 

Sean Scanlon is a Military Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. He regularly writes for The National WWII Museum’s website, provides advice on historical content for new exhibits, hosts public events, and has participated in the Museum’s Normandy Academy program. Originally from Western Massachusetts, Scanlon received his BA in history and religious studies from Stonehill College and his MA and PhD in history from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. He previously was a visiting assistant professor of history at the University of Mississippi, where he taught undergraduate courses in modern US history. A specialist in 20th-century US diplomatic, military, political, and religious history, Scanlon’s current research explores the history of New Orleans’s WWII-era Jewish community.

Brittany Huner is a Research Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. She earned her PhD from the University of North Texas, where her dissertation analyzed how American servicewomen in World War II used their creative materials to negotiate the conflicting messages about traditional femininity and the military. A native of Colorado, Huner earned her BA at the University of Northern Colorado and MA at the University of Colorado at Denver. She has received several research awards and fellowships and presented her work at various conferences. Huner previously worked at several museums in Colorado, including the Nursing History Archive at the University of Colorado’s College of Nursing, and assisted with several projects with Historic Denver and the Colorado Governor’s Residence. She also worked with the History Colorado Center in their Digital Imaging Studio and participated in the creation of the Winter Warriors: the 10th Mountain Division in World War II exhibit in 2023.

Ambassador Edward O’Donnell leads the Arizona State University course “Diplomacy in Action, the Embassy Country Team” in Washington, D.C., and is launching a Master of Arts in International Affairs and Leadership. He is a member of the ASU Leadership, Diplomacy, and National Security Lab; a Professor of Practice in the School of Politics and Global Studies; and a member of the Barrett Honors Faculty. O’Donnell retired from the US Foreign Service in 2007 after 33 years in Latin America, German-speaking Europe and other positions in Washington. He also served in the Active U.S. Army Reserve for 30 years with tours in Germany, Panama and the United States. He earned his BA in history from Southern Methodist University and his MA in international studies from American University. 

An urban, public, and digital historian, Mark Tebeau has directed more than two dozen digital humanities, oral history, and public history projects. Tebeau leads the development of Curatescape, a framework for mobile publishing that seeks to make open-source and/or low-cost hosted mobile tools available to scholars and curators. With funding from the NEH Office of Digital Humanities, Curatescape is being used by more than 20 cultural organizations, universities, and heritage preservation organizations to curate landscapes and museums. Projects include Salt River Stories, Cleveland Historical (which Tebeau co-directs), Spokane Historical, Baltimore Heritage, New Orleans Historical, Explore Kentucky, and Connecticut Communities.

Ricardo Herrera is the Non-Resident Asness Fellow at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. He is also Senior Historian at the George Washington Leadership Institute in Mount Vernon, Virginia. He is the author of Feeding Washington’s Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778 (2022), For Liberty and the Republic: The American Citizen as Soldier, 1775-1861 (2015), and the forthcoming A Most Uncommon Soldier: The Life, Letters, and Journal of Edward Ashley Bowen Phelps, 1814-1893, as well as numerous articles and essays. Herrera’s writings have earned him awards from the Army Historical Foundation and the Society for Military History, which also awarded him the Edwin H. Simmons Award for Distinguished Service in 2025. Herrera earned his BA from the University of California, Los Angeles and his PhD from Marquette University. He has taught at the School of Advanced Military Studies, US Army Command and General Staff College, and was team chief of staff rides at the Combat Studies Institute. Before becoming a historian, Herrera served three years as an armor and cavalry officer in the Army.