Director: Susannah J. Ural, Ph.D. is a professor of history and co-director of the Dale Center for the Study of War & Society at the University of Southern Mississippi. A US military historian/war and society scholar by training, Ural specializes in the Civil War era and much of her scholarship examines the experiences of soldiers and their families at war. She is the author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War including The Harp and the Eagle: Irish-American Volunteers and the Union Army, 1861-1865 (NYU Press, 2006), Don’t Hurry Me Down to Hades: Soldiers and Families in America’s Civil War (Osprey, 2013), and Hood’s Texas Brigade: The Soldiers and Families of the Confederacy’s Most Celebrated Unit (LSU Press, 2017). Ural is a trustee of the Society for Military History, chair of the editorial board of the Journal of Military History, sits on the board of The Journal of the Civil War Era and Civil War Times Magazine, and is past president of the Mississippi Historical Society. She recently launched another digital project, the Civil War Governors of Mississippi, which will provide digital scans, transcriptions, and annotations, all open access, of the state’s governors’ papers from 1859 through the early 1880s – a sweeping span that will help scholars, teachers, students, and the public study Mississippi through secession and war, emancipation and occupation, and Redemption and the Jim Crow South.
BVP Website Designers:
Allan Branstiter earned his MA in history from the University of Southern Mississippi, where he is also ABD and writing his doctoral dissertation. He is currently employed by the US Department of Veterans Affairs at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System’s Office of Quality, Safety, and Value in California. As an Employee Development Specialist, he is charged with designing and managing two learning and development programs: the Bridge Program (for entry-level employees) and the Emerging Leaders Development Program (for mid-level and new executive employees). These 6-month-long programs support modernization and reform efforts within the VA by promoting and teaching leadership, professional, critical thinking, strategic thinking, and customer service skills, as well as military history and cultural awareness—all with the ultimate goal of increasing value for veterans and their families.
Stephanie Seal Walters earned her MA from the University of Southern Mississippi and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in US History at George Mason University. She is the Digital Humanities Specialist for the Digital Scholarship Center–a division of Fenwick Library where she teaches students and faculty to enhance their research with digital humanities tools. She works in web design, Omeka exhibits, and ‘R’ programming.
BVP Student Research Team:
Over multiple semesters, scores of Southern Miss graduate and undergraduate students were assigned residents to research and analyze within the context of Civil War-era Mississippi. In the summer, thanks to funding through the Moorman Professorship, a carefully assembled team checked the research for accuracy and finished any remaining work in the 185 person sample. You can find the results of that research on this page. Web designer Allan Branstiter wrote biographies of the residents for the BVP website.
Special thanks to the Summer 2016 and Summer 2017 research teams: