Q. Do you think one's faith influences how they understand and interpret historical events, particularly when history involves competing narratives or interpretations?

Religion can be one of many factors that inform the way someone responds to historical events. Many faith traditions offer different approaches of trying to know not only the divine, but also cosmic history, individual purpose, and ways to structure a community.As a result, adherents who rely on their faith to inform their worldview and their values will ultimately interpret historical narratives through the lens they see the world. Of course, the same can be said for any type of factor that influences someone's worldview: religiosity, age, gender, economic background, ethnicity, culture, nationality, ideology, and so much more. In the end, worldviews set the lens with which someone meets a narrative and decides their opinions about that story, and religion can be one part that shapes someone's worldview.

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Q. In a day and age where historical facts can be found online within seconds, why do you think studying history remains important? What does studying history offer that simply having access to information does not?

The value of a History degree goes well beyond the facts you learn in class. It provides a student with a skill set that can be leveraged to open the many doors that a degree in History offers. Through time spent analyzing tricky documents, crafting cohesive narratives from incomplete sources, connecting the dots between global trends, and working through the biases of their sources, a student is allowed to advance their skills in writing, teaching, pattern-recognition, reading, critical thinking, and more. That is why people who study history at an institutional level end up in career fields with overlapping skills, such as law, education, journalism, writing, and government. In short: A history degree does not just teach facts. It teaches how to analyze and piece together stories in a way that people can understand.

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Q.As a student who is studying history, what would you want to change about the way history is taught in formal institutions, and what is one thing that you think these institutions get right in teaching history?

To preface, I can only speak from my experience at the institutions that I have attended, so what I say may not apply to all institutions! I will begin with what I think the history pedagogy gets right, and that is: teaching students how to think and not what to think. It is a massive service to students when they are taught the skills to critically analyze the world around them instead of simply memorizing the takeaways their instructor desires them to have. This way they can transfer their learning wherever their journey takes them after college. As for what things these institutions can get wrong, there is always the danger that their research and arguments get used for wrong. What an era of researchers thinks is widely standard and acceptable due to the attitudes and politics of society at the time, may in fact be very wrong, unjust, and evil. Take for example when eugenics was considered a science in the United States or when saying one country has "more history" than another is used to justify unjust imperialism. This is why it is very important to be careful when you write your arguments and consider ways it can be used by others with an ulterior agenda.