J. Michael Francis

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John Michael Francis (born 1968) is a Canadian historian.

Francis was born in 1968 and raised in Alberta. [1] [2]

He earned a Bachelor of Arts in history, with honors, as well as a Master of Arts in the same subject, from the University of Alberta. [3] He then completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge in 1998. [3] [4] Francis taught at the University of North Florida from 1997 to 2012, when he joined the St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida as Hough Family Chair of Florida Studies. Between 2016 and 2020, Francis also served as chair of the USF Department of History and Politics. [4] In September 2021, Ron DeSantis appointed Francis to a two-year term on the Florida Historical Commission. [5] In October 2021, Francis was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic by Felipe VI of Spain. [6] [7]

Francis founded a digital archive, La Florida, in 2018. [8] The archive won the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation's 2024 Florida Preservation Award for communications and media. [9]

Selected books

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References

  1. ↑ "Can one man overcome 500 years of distorted Florida history?". Tampa Bay Times. 4 March 2013. Retrieved 29 January 2025. Francis, 45, is a blond-haired, blue-eyed, baby-faced historian at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg...
  2. ↑ Becnel, Thomas (27 March 2013). "Ponce de Leon's Florida fountain search is a pack of lies?". Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Retrieved 29 January 2025. Francis, 45, is a blonde and blue-eyed history professor who has become the handsome face of Spanish colonial scholarship in Florida. ... Francis is a Canadian from Alberta...
  3. 1 2 "J. Michael Francis". University of South Florida. Retrieved 26 January 2025.
  4. 1 2 "J. Michael Francis, Ph.D." University of South Florida College of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 26 January 2025.
  5. ↑ "Governor appoints professor to Florida Historical Commission". University of South Florida. 22 September 2021. Retrieved 26 January 2025.
  6. ↑ "USF History professor inducted into Spanish royal order for groundbreaking work on Florida's early history". University of South Florida. 26 October 2021. Retrieved 26 January 2025.
  7. ↑ Kumar, Divya (28 October 2021). "USF professor honored by the King of Spain for work on Florida's history". Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved 26 January 2025.
  8. ↑ "Presentation of La Florida: The Interactive Digital Archive of the Americas". Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain, Washington, D.C. March 2018. Retrieved 29 January 2025.
  9. ↑ Cimitile, Matthew (18 July 2024). "Innovative digital archive project receives Florida historic preservation award". University of South Florida. Retrieved 29 January 2025.
  10. ↑ Bancroft, Colette (14 October 2015). "Festival of Reading: Florida's history flows through four festival books". Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved 27 January 2025.
  11. ↑ Reviews of Murder and Martyrdom in Spanish Florida include:
  12. ↑ Reviews of Invading Colombia include:
    • Offutt, Leslie S. (2009). "Rereading Conquest: Recent Works on the Conquests of Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia". Ethnohistory. 56 (1): 187–193. doi:10.1215/00141801-2008-040.
    • Altman, Ida (July 2008). "Invading Colombia: Spanish Accounts of the Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada Expedition of Conquest (review)". The Journal of Military History. 72 (3): 935–936. doi:10.1353/jmh.0.0058.
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