Dr. Lorna Zukas is a Professor of Sociology and Global Studies at National University. Her research is on women in war, national liberation struggles, and the impact of war on African societies. She has worked with ex-freedom fighters in Zimbabwe and on reintegration projects with post-conflict populations in Rwanda. From 1998 to 2007 she served as Director of the Center for Cultural and Ethnic Studies (CCES) at National University. In this position, she brought faculty from diverse academic institutions together with students, community members, artists, and specialists in the humanities to work on and dialog over important social and cultural issues. She planned and implemented over forty events during this period, many of them externally funded by granting agencies.

Dr. Alexander Zukas is Professor of History and Archive Director of National University’s Community Oral History Project (COHP). Dr. Zukas is a historian of the modern world with expertise and publications in social history and participatory learning. He has taught courses on World War II and has supervised M.A. theses on Japanese Postwar Memory, PTSD after the American Civil War, Civil-Military Relations in the American Revolutionary War, and A Study of Soldier Attitudes as Reflected in War Movies Made During and After World War II. Dr. Zukas co-directed Sailors’ Tales: Stories of San Diego’s Navy Community and the Naval Training Center, a grant-funded collaboration among National University, the San Diego Naval Training Center, the San Diego Historical Society, and the COHP at National University. He founded the COHP as a pedagogical tool and has trained students in standard oral historical methodologies, interviewing techniques, and technical competencies. He also oversaw their interviews with local World War II veterans, Native Americans, labor organizers, and civil rights leaders. An experienced teacher and discussion facilitator, Dr. Zukas is an award-winning teacher who will instruct NEH Discussion Leaders in methods of discussion facilitation, articulation of concepts in readings and films, and techniques for handling emotional discussion topics.

Dr. Henry Venter is a licensed psychologist in the State of California and Professor of Psychology at National University. He is the university’s Regional Program Director of the Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology in the Los Angeles Area. Dr. Venter’s clinical and research focus is trauma and related mental health disorders among veterans deployed to war zones. As part of his work with the Veterans Administration, he examined more than 3,500 World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, and Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans. He co-developed a treatment protocol, the Integrated Person-Centered, and Existential (IPCE) model, used in the treatment of combat veterans with PTSD. Dr. Venter will mentor NEH Discussion leaders on how to help discussion-group participants talk through emotional issues that are likely to arise in group discussion and serve as a mentor for NEH Discussion Leaders on questions related to the social and emotional stresses faced by returning veterans.

Dr. William Weeks has been a lecturer in the San Diego State Department of History since 1984 and has taught at National University since 2009. He is a specialist in Early American Foreign Relations and is the author of three books in the field. His professional interest concerns helping veterans and citizens survive the impacts of war. As a university teacher, Dr. Weeks’ long-held empathy for the veterans in his courses has evolved into helping to initiate a Veteran’s Oral History Program at San Diego State University (SDSU) and becoming a member of the advisory board of SDSU’s Barron’s Veteran Center. Dr. Weeks’ SDSU course “Writing War, Remembrance, and Reconciliation,” was designed for those affected, directly or indirectly, by war. Participation in A Soldier’s Place: Veterans and Civilians Speaking about War represents another step in Dr. Weeks’ efforts (to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln) to help bind up the psychic wounds of the nation from the scourge of war.