I am a native Texan, born in Houston and raised in Humble. I earned a BA in English from the University of St Thomas, then served two years in the Peace Corps in Romania. After completing my Peace Corps service, I studied at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, where I earned an MA in Cultural Studies. I continued my graduate work at the University of Oxford, St Antony’s College, where I earned an MSt in Historical Research and a PhD in Modern History.
In 2015, I was hired full-time in the History Department at Lone Star College. Over the years, I have taught Intro to Humanities (HUMA 1301 & 1302), World History (HIST 2321 & 2322), and U.S. History (HIST 1301 & 1302). I have also taught as a visiting lecturer at Romania’s National School of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest.
My current research interests include the cultures and histories of central and eastern Europe, with a focus on minorities, religion, and historiography. My book Hungarian Religion, Romanian Blood: A Minority’s Struggle for National Belonging, 1920–45, published by the University of Wisconsin Press (2019), won the Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies’ Barbara Jelavich Book Prize for “distinguished monograph published on any aspect of Southeast European or Habsburg studies since 1600, or nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ottoman or Russian diplomatic history.”
My scholarship has been supported by grants and fellowships from the U.S. Fulbright Commission, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), among others. I have also worked as a research assistant at the European Studies Centre at St Antony’s College, Univ. of Oxford; a research fellow at both the Centre for Advanced Study (Sofia, Bulgaria) and New Europe College (Bucharest, Romania); and a consultant and editor for a number of research projects and working groups in east central Europe, including the European Network for Research and Cooperation on Roma (Gypsy) Issues.
Since 2013, I have served as the book reviews editor for H-Romania, an H-Net (Humanities & Social Sciences Online) Network, and as a board member of the Society for Romanian Studies. I am also the president of the Humble Museum. In 2016, I was awarded a Chancellor’s Faculty Technology Innovation Grant to establish the LSC Center for Local & Oral History. In 2017, I received the Innovator of the Year Award at LSC-Kingwood. In 2019 and again in 2025, I was honored with an LSC Faculty Excellence Award. From spring 2023 to 2026, I served as the Faculty Senate President for LSC-Online, and since fall 2026, I have served as Department Chair for History, Government, and Art.
For more info about my research and scholarship, including my CV and links to some of my publications, please visit my Academia.edu page at https://lscs.academia.edu/RChrisDavis.