Dr. Bruce Westrate is a historian, author, and educator specializing in the British Empire, the modern Middle East, modern Africa, and South Asia. He holds three degrees in History from the University of Michigan, including a Ph.D. in British Empire and Commonwealth history, with subfields in the modern Middle East, modern Africa, and South Asia.

He is the author of The Arab Bureau: British Policy in the Middle East, 1916–1920, published by Penn State University Press, a widely cited work of imperial and Middle Eastern history that remains in print more than three decades after publication. His scholarship and commentary have appeared in academic and public forums including the American Historical Review, International History Review, National Review, and Rediscovering the British Empire, to which he contributed “Acknowledged Truths: Lord Bentinck and the Abolition of Sati.” He has also lectured at Magdalen College, Oxford, on D. G. Hogarth and the Arab Bureau.

A longtime teacher of history and the humanities, Dr. Westrate holds the Marcus Master Teaching Chair in the Humanities at St. Mark’s School of Texas. His novel Altar of Ashes draws on his scholarly expertise in empire, law, religion, and the abolition of sati to tell a modern legal thriller about moral judgment, cultural collision, and the limits of tolerance.