OUR INSTRUCTORS
John Hessler
When not climbing in the Alps or racing a carbon fiber Pinarello, John Hessler is an applied mathematician, geographic information systems scientist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University.
He currently teaches courses in the theoretical foundations of spatial epidemiology and the mathematics of deep and machine learning at University College London, and at Sorbonne Université - Campus Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris.
Formerly a specialist in computational geography and GIS at the Library of Congress, and advisor to the US Congress and Senate on the geospatial dynamics of infectious disease transmission, he is the founder and director of BIOMAP AI (https://arcg.is/05uzmW), where they use bioinformatic and genomic data, machine learning, and advanced geographic information systems, to study the far-from-equilibrium and non-stationary transmission and risk of zoonotic diseases, especially the movement patterns of their animal hosts.
The author or editor of more than one hundred articles and books, including the New York Times bestseller and NPR selection, MAP: exploring the world (https://www.npr.org/2015/12/14/457411671/map-is-an-exquisite-record-of-the-miles-and-the-millennia), Hessler is now trying to turn a mess of mathematical course notes into the forthcoming book, Lectures on Mereotopology and the Ontological Foundations of Geographic Information Science (https://arcg.is/15n4Hu).
His latest article, To Save Lives: Lessons of a Pandemic Cartographer, was recently published in the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.
A Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, he finds being close to the gentle hum of supercomputers, pondering the complexities of ancient DNA, and exploring the deep labyrinths of the renormalization group, strangely comforting.
Richard Bell
Richard Bell is a Professor of History at the University of Maryland and a scholar specializing in American history from 1750 to 1877. He earned his PhD from Harvard University and his BA from the University of Cambridge and has held fellowships at prestigious institutions such as the Huntington Library and the Library of Congress. Bell is a historian and author known for his works on American history, including The American Revolution and the Fate of the World and Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home. He has also authored numerous book chapters and journal articles, contributing extensively to the study of early American history.
Bell has served as a Mellon Fellow in American History at Cambridge University, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society, and a Research Fellow at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Abolition, and Resistance at Yale University. He is a frequent lecturer and debater on C-SPAN and participates in public history events, including the America250 speaker series. His work is recognized for its global perspective on American history, combining rigorous scholarship with compelling storytelling that illuminates both well-known and overlooked aspects of the nation’s past.
Books
The American Revolution and the Fate of the World (2025) – This book examines the American Revolution as a global event, exploring its impact across India, Africa, Central America, and Australia. Bell highlights how the Revolution disrupted trade, penal systems, and created the first global refugee crisis, while grounding the narrative in the experiences of individuals, including women and minorities
Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped Into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home (2019) – This work tells the true story of five free Black boys kidnapped in Philadelphia and sold into slavery in the Deep South. The book was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize, and it sheds light on the Reverse Underground Railroad.
We Shall Be No More: Suicide and Self-Government in the Newly United States (2012) – A monograph exploring the cultural role of discourse on self-destruction in the early republic
Buried Lives: Incarcerated in Early America (2012) – A co-edited volume of essays focusing on the experiences of incarcerated individuals in early America, stemming from a conference at the McNeil Center.