Faculty Principal, Honors Residential College at East Ambler Johnston Hall

Robert Stephens, Associate Professor of History, is a founding Faculty Principal of the Honors Residential College at East Ambler Johnston Hall. Dr. Stephens is a graduate of the University of North Texas and the University of Texas at Austin, where he received his Ph.D. in Modern European History.

He is an award-winning teacher and President of Virginia Tech's Diggs community of scholars. In 2007, he published his first book, Germans on Drugs. The book examines the history of the illicit drug trade in Germany and the creation of youth drug culture in Hamburg during the 1960s and 1970s. He is currently writing a book about drug films - an examination of the emergence of visual narratives of drug addiction and their impact on American policymaking over the past century. Dr. Stephens has also collaborated with other faculty members to publish the Digital History Reader, which broke new ground in the emerging field of digital history, and continues to publish on innovatuve approaches to classroom teaching.

Dr. Stephens resides in the Honors Residential College along with his wife (Dr. Heather Gumbert) and their Vizsla, Liam.