PhD: University of Durham & Universität Erfurt, Max-Weber-Kolleg (cotutelle)

MA: King’s College London

BA: Catawba College

Dr Collins is a historian of early modern European history, specializing in urban, religious, peace-making, globalization, and spatial approaches. His research investigates how monarchical and religious influence interacted with civic authority within urban spaces and New World settlements during the early French Wars of Religion of the sixteenth century.

His current book project, based on his doctoral dissertation and provisionally entitled Cities and the Crown during the Royal Tour of France (1564-1566): Civic, Urban, and Spatial Interactions during the Early Religious Wars, explores how royal, civic, and religious actors utilized the urban spaces of Angoulême, Lyon, and Sens to project their own authority and promote religious toleration and coexistence through royal entrances amid religious warfare.

Dr Collins is also currently researching the early trans-Atlantic relationship between the French settlements of France Antarctique, Charlesfort, and Fort Caroline with French port cities during the early French Wars of Religion. His research incorporates primary source material such as festival books, financial records, correspondences, city council minutes, and maps.

Prior to �鶹�ƽ��, Dr Collins held a Teach@Tübingen postdoctoral fellowship at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen where he designed and taught seminars about early modern religious violence and early modern global cities.

Selected Publication:
‘Constructing a Monarchical and Religious Connection: Angoulême, the Royal Tour, and the French Wars of Religion’ in Religion and Urbanity Online (22/07/2025) ()

Research Interests:

• Early Modern France
• French Wars of Religion
• Centre & Periphery
• Religious Tolerance & Coexistence
• Urban & Spatial History
• Visual & Material Culture

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Education

Ph.D., Mississippi State University; M.A. The University of North Carolina at Charlotte; B.A. �鶹�ƽ��

Professor Vanderburg’s work focuses on the nature of paternalism at Cannon Mills and Kannapolis.  A specialist in the twentieth-century South and a “Who’s Who Among American Teachers,” he teaches courses on the New South, the American Civil War, and US History. 

Selected Publications by Dr. Vanderburg

Cannon Mills and Kannapolis: Persistent Paternalism in a Textile Town (University of Tennessee Press, 2013).

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Education

• Ph.D.: State University of New York at Stony Brook
• M.A.: Department of History, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
• B.A.: Department of English, Northwestern Polytechnic University, Xi’an, China

Biography

Dr. Aihua Zhang joined Gardner‑Webb University after serving as a visiting assistant professor at Stockton University. Her research focuses on modern China, women and gender, East Asian culture and society, social activism, transnationalism, and global history. Her monograph, The Beijing Young Women’s Christian Association, 1927–1937: Materializing a Gendered Modernity (Lexington Books, 2021), is the first full-length study of the YWCA in a Chinese city. In addition to contributing a chapter to Christianity and the Modern Woman in East Asia (Brill), she has published multiple peer-reviewed works, including “The Making of Modern Female Citizens in Republican China” in The American Journal of Chinese Studies; “Reinventing Tradition and Indigenizing Modernity: The Beijing New Women and Their Creation of a New Feminine Leisure Culture, 1911–1937” in Women’s History Review; and the co‑authored study “Women’s Leisure and Leisure Satisfaction in Contemporary China” in World Leisure Journal.

Courses Taught

Pre-modern Chinese History, Modern China, Chinese Culture, Revolution/Democracy in East Asia, East Asian Traditions and Culture, World Civilizations, and Histories of Feminism

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