Harry A. Kersey, Jr. is Professor Emeritus of History at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. A native Floridian, he received his Bachelor of Arts and Masters degrees from the University of Florida, and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1966, Dr. Kersey began teaching at Florida Atlantic University and currently is an emeritus professor of history at FAU. Professor Kersey has a rich background in international research and teaching. He has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar at two African universities—the University of Zimbabwe (1984) and the National University of Lesotho (1988)—where he lectured and initiated research on comparative frontier history. In 1996, the United States Information Agency sponsored his appearance as a Visiting Lecturer on American Indian history at the Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod in Russia. During 2000, he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the National Library of New Zealand conducting research for a comparative study of Maori and American Indian sovereignty issues. The Treaty of Waitangi Research Unit at Victoria University of Wellington published his initial research findings. As a follow-up to the New Zealand work, Kersey was awarded a Visiting Research Fellowship at the East-West Center in Honolulu during the summer of 2001. He returned to New Zealand in 2002 and 2005 as a Fulbright Senior Specialist examining the impact of Maori issues in New Zealand politics. Dr. Kersey's recent publication, Seminole Voices received a silver medal in the non-fiction category of the 2010 Florida Book Awards. It also won the Harry and Harriet Moore Book Award and The Samuel Proctor Oral History Prize given by the Florida Historical Society. Dr. Kersey is currently involved in comparative research on indigenous rights, political sovereignty, and the impact of minority issues on national governments. In addition, he occasionally teaches courses at both Florida Atlantic University and the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.
