Rob Citino is the Museum’s Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian. He is an award-winning military historian and scholar who has published 10 books, including The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand: The German Campaigns of 1944-1945; The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War,1943; Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942; and The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich. He has also published numerous articles covering World War II and 20th century military affairs. In 2021, he won the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society for Military History for lifetime achievement in the field. He speaks widely and contributes regularly to general readership magazines such as World War II. He graduated magna cum laude with a BA in history from Ohio State University and earned a MA and PhD from Indiana University. Citino enjoys close ties with the US military establishment and taught one year at the US Military Academy at West Point and two years at the US Army War College.

Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller, PhD, former historian and Vice Chancellor at the University of New Orleans (UNO), served as Founding President & CEO of The National WWII Museum. During a distinguished career at UNO, Mueller made his mark as a popular teacher, Dean, and Vice Chancellor. He played a lead role in creating UNO’s Metropolitan College and building new extension and distance learning programs, the university’s Conference Center, Center Austria and the International Summer School in Innsbruck, Austria, and founding the UNO Research and Technology Park. Mueller’s role as the Museum’s President & CEO Emeritus affords him time for research and for writing a history of the Museum and about other WWII topics. He continues to lead overseas WWII tours and speaks widely on the war experience, the American spirit, and nonprofit leadership. He also provides advice and support to the Museum’s top executives, working closely with the distinguished Presidential Counselors advisory group, and assists learning initiatives led by the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. His exceptional contributions to the preservation and interpretation of WWII history and his special contributions to public awareness of the D-Day landings in Normandy have resulted in numerous awards. In May 2016, the French government bestowed the Legion of Honor on Mueller and two national figures who have assisted the Museum since its founding, Tom Hanks and Tom Brokaw. Mueller has also been elected to the board of the National History Center in Washington, D.C., the public advocacy subsidiary of the American Historical Association.

Jeremy Collins joined The National WWII Museum in 2001 as an intern with the Collections & Exhibits Department while pursuing his history degree at the University of Missouri and soon after became a full-time staff member. In Collections & Exhibits, he immersed himself in the artifacts and stories from the Museum’s collection and was involved with many of the Museum’s special exhibitions, co-curating When Baseball Went to War. In 2008, he moved to the Travel & Conference Department and became involved with the travel program’s design, development and content while scouting, leading or manage tours all over the world, including the Philippines, the Mediterranean, England, and Northwest Europe. Collins currently oversees the creation, planning, marketing and execution of many of the Museum’s marquee public programs, including book launches, distinguished lectures, symposia, and the annual International Conference on World War II. As a member of the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, Collins provides public programming of the highest caliber to the Museum’s audience, both physical and digital.

Jason Dawsey joined The National WWII Museum in September 2017 as a Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) Special Projects Historian and investigated what happened to hundreds of American POWs in German captivity whose remains were never recovered. Since January 2019, he has worked in the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy as a Research Historian. Dawsey received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2013 and has taught world history and European history at Pearl River Community College, the University of Chicago, the University of Southern Mississippi, and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. In the Institute, he examines the service records of WWII veterans and writes their biographies for family members, and regularly contributes to the Museum’s website and public programming on subjects such as the anti-Nazi resistance, the Holocaust, and the lives and careers of scholars who shaped our understanding of World War II. Beyond his research on World War II, Dawsey co-edited (with Günter Bischof and Bernhard Fetz) The Life and Work of Günther Anders: Émigré, Iconoclast, Philosopher, Man of Letters (Studien Verlag, 2015) and is the author of several articles and book chapters on the philosophical and political thought of Günther Anders.

Steph Hinnershitz joined the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy as a Historian in June 2021. Before coming to The National WWII Museum, she held teaching positions at Valdosta State University in Georgia, Cleveland State University in Ohio, and the US Military Academy at West Point. She received her PhD in American History in 2013 from the University of Maryland and specializes in the history of the Home Front during World War II. She has published books and articles on Asian American history, including Race, Religion, and Civil Rights: Asian Students on the West Coast, 1900-1968 and A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South. Her most recent book, Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor during World War II, was recently published with the University of Pennsylvania Press. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, West Point, the Social Science Research Council, the Library of Congress, and the US Army Heritage and Education Center, among others.

Jennifer Popowycz is the Leventhal Research Fellow at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. She received her PhD in History from Louisiana State University in 2021 and specializes in the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe. She has written articles and presented research on Ukrainian displaced persons in postwar Germany, the impact of total war and occupation policies on civilians in Eastern Europe, the production of art by Holocaust survivors, and the transformation of the European Economic Community into the European Union. Her contribution to the edited volume The German-Soviet War, 1941-1945 examines the radicalization of Nazi forced labor policies and the experience of Ukrainian forced laborers during World War II. Her research has been supported by the Auschwitz Jewish Center, the International Ukrainian School, the Southern Slavic Studies Association, and the T. Harry Williams Dissertation Fellowship.

John Curatola is the Military Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. A Marine Corps officer of 22 years, he graduated from the University of Nebraska and is a veteran of Operation Provide Hope in Somalia, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami relief effort. He holds masters’ degrees in both American and Military History. With a PhD from the University of Kansas, John’s research focuses upon World War II, airpower, and the early Cold War period. Previously he taught history at the US Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His first book Bigger Bombs for a Brighter Tomorrow addressed the nature of the American atomic monopoly with his latest entitled, Autumn of Our Discontent, assessing US national security policy development in 1950. Additionally, his works are available in compendium books, popular magazines, and academic journals with his many presentations available for viewing on CSPAN and YouTube.

Rebecca Poole is a native of Southeast Louisiana. She graduated with her Master’s degree in Public History from the University of New Orleans in Spring 2020.  Her research is focused on local 20th-century New Orleans history, vice, and gender and sexuality. During grad school, she joined the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy as an intern assisting with the Institute’s Historical Research Services. In the Fall of 2020, she rejoined the Museum’s team in the Institutional Advancement’s Membership department, where she coordinated the daily services for members. She reunited with the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy in July 2022 as the Historical Research Specialist. In her current role, she manages the institute’s Historical Research Services, provides assistance to special research requests from the public, and conducts historical research on WWII related topics.

Andrew Good joined the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy as Project Manager in the summer of 2022. Prior to joining the Institute team, he earned his Master’s of Arts in History from the University of New Orleans in May 2022. Andrew’s experience includes supporting historical preservation, access, and inquiry at the Institute and elsewhere. He has been involved in chronicling veteran experiences with the Institute’s Historical Research Services, administrating an oral history collection of World War II Homefront “Rosies,” and even helping restore historical aircraft. All these experiences have kindled his personal research interests in historical causation, the American World War II Homefront, and demobilization.

Mark earned his PhD in History from the University of Kansas in 2012 and is the author of General Lesley J. McNair: Unsung Architect of the U.S. Army (University Press of Kansas, 2015), the first comprehensive military life of General Lesley J. McNair. The book reveals previously unpublished details of McNair's forty-year career and assesses the impact of McNair’s views and actions on America's mobilization for and involvement in World War II. Mark's current research interests center on General William H. Simpson, commander of Ninth US Army, and Ninth Army’s operations during the campaign in Northwest Europe from 1944 to 1945. A career U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter pilot and war planner, Dr. Calhoun retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2008, after which he served for fourteen years as an associate professor on the faculty of the U.S. Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth.

Connie is a native of Houma, Louisiana and a graduate of Nicholls State University. In May 2020, she received her MA in History from the University of New Orleans. Connie joined the Museum team in 2018, working in the President & CEO Emeritus Office until her recent switch to the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. In her time at the Museum, Connie helped manage past programs such as the Memory Wars Conference and the Annual Presidential Counselors Meeting. In her new role as Conference and Programs Specialist, Connie will continue to work on Museum public programs such as Meet the Author events, scholar workshops and the International Conference on WWII.

Marcus S. Cox serves as Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Fayetteville State University. He earned an undergraduate degree in marketing and a master’s degree in history from Southern University in Baton Rouge and a master’s degree in business administration from The Tommy and Victoria School of Business at The Citadel Military College of South Carolina. Dr. Cox also received his doctorate degree in African American history from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Professor Cox specializes in African American civil-military history, the Modern Civil Rights Movement, African American history, and U.S. history post-1945. He is the author of over two dozen articles, reviews, and book chapters in peer-reviewed journals and academic publications on the history of African American military history, black higher education and military training programs at black colleges and universities. He is also the author of Segregated Soldiers: Military Training at Historically Black Colleges in the Jim Crow South (Louisiana State University Press).

Dr. Cox currently serves as a Fellow at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, Chairman of the Veterans Rural Health Advisory Committee to the U.S. Secretary of Veteran Affairs, and former Advisory Committee Member for the Roundtable Discussion on Diversity and Inclusion, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command.