William Roger Louis

William Roger Louis, CBE FBA (born May 8, 1936), also known as Wm. Roger Louis, or Roger Louis, informally, is a distinguished historian at the University of Texas at Austin. Louis is the Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford History of the British Empire, the former President of the American Historical Association, the former Chairman of the Department of State Historical Advisory Committee, and the Founding Director of the American Historical Association's National History Center in Washington, D.C. Louis took his B.A. at the University of Oklahoma, M.A. at Harvard University, and D.Phil at Oxford University. Louis joined the history faculty at the University of Texas in 1970 after teaching at Yale University for eight years. He has directed British Studies since 1975, has held the Kerr Chair in English History and Culture since 1985, and has served as the Chairman of the British Scholar Editorial Advisory Board since 2006. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1993, and in 1999 Louis was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by the Queen for professional achievement. Louis is best known for his work on the British Empire, which focuses mostly on official British policy and decolonization in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East in the period after the Second World War. Louis has been acclaimed by A.J.P. Taylor as the foremost historian of the Empire in his generation, and by Alan Bullock as the leading historian of the final phase of the Empire. Ronald Robinson, one of the most influential of all imperial historians, wrote that "Louis takes his place among a handful of writers from Hancock to Harlow to Cain and Hopkins who have given us an original view of a major movement in British imperial history."

In 2009, Roger Louis was appointed to the Kluge Chair at the Library of Congress for the spring semester 2010. The Kluge Chair represents the apex of scholarly distinction. The position was originally set up to be the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for scholars in fields of study not represented by that award. Louis will use the time as the Kluge Chair to complete his book The British Empire in the Middle East, 1952-1971, the sequel to one of his previous monumental works, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951. Simultaneously, Louis received in February 2009 the University of Texas Professor of the Year, an award "in recognition of unwavering dedication and service" to the students of UT. The award, presented by the Senate of College Councils, represents the choice of the 50,000 students at UT, a university-wide honor. In 2011, Louis was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an independent policy research center, founded in 1780, whose early members included George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and of course the founders, John Adams, John Hancock, and James Bowdoin. Louis joins the Academy's 200 Nobel laureates and its 4,000 other members in what is probably the most distinguished professional association of its kind.