January 29, 2010 - Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has appointed William Roger Louis, a distinguished historian from the University of Texas at Austin, to the John W. Kluge Center Chair for Countries and Cultures of the North.  Through an endowment from John W. Kluge, the Library of Congress established the Kluge Center in 2000 to bring together the world's best thinkers to stimulate and energize one another to distill wisdom from the Library's rich resources and to interact with policymakers in Washington. 

 

While at the Kluge Center, from January through May, Louis will complete his book "The British Empire in the Middle East, 1952-1971," which is a sequel to his previous work "The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951."  Louis is the Kerr Professor of English History and Culture at the University of Texas (UT). He is also editor-in-chief of The Oxford History of the British Empire and director of the American Historical Association's (AHA) National History Center.  The author and editor of approximately 30 books, Louis is best known for his work on the British Empire, focusing mostly on official British policy and decolonization in Asia, Africa and the Middle East in the period after the Second World War.  He is also the former chairman of the U.S. State Department's Historical Advisory Committee and former president of AHA.

 

Additional information is available here.