Ian Abbey

A maritime historian, Dr. Ian Abbey has focused his career on piracy and privateering. He earned his doctorate in history from Texas A&M University and, like every other Aggie, bleeds maroon. History contextualizes the present and prepares nations and the global community as a whole to confront today's challenges. Dr. Abbey is a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow and has studied American maritime communities from the ancient world until the present day. He is very much a global citizen and has lived and worked throughout the world. That includes teaching English in South Korea, working for Qatar's Texas A&M campus, and serving as an advisor to Prairie View A&M University's Model United Nations.

It is vital to understand daily life in past civilizations and time periods, which is why Dr. Abbey has improved his culinary skills and can cook dishes from the past. It started as a Medieval feast for a Game of Thrones viewing party, but those feasts grew more lavish every season as his historical cooking skills became more refined and diverse. It is not uncommon for his dinner guests or wife to dine on foods from the Medieval Islamic world, Ancient Rome, and the Firefly universe.

He is currently an assistant professor of history at Prairie View A&M and is turning his dissertation on privateers into a book.