Teo Ruiz is a Distinguished Research Professor (Emeritus) at UCLA and a scholar of the social and culture history of late medieval and early modern Spain and the Western Mediterranean. Awarded UCLA’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008, he was also the Faculty Research lecturer for 2011-12. The author or co-author of fifteen books and over 100 articles, he has lectured in the US and abroad before and after coming to UCLA in 1998. Awarded the National Humanities Medal for 2011 by President Obama for his “inspired teaching and writing,” and a doctor honoris causa from the Universidad de Cantabria (Spain) in 2017, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of fellowships from the NEH, the Mellon Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the ACLS, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Academy in Rome. He was P.I. for a California History, Social Sciences project for a 7th grade curriculum on global sites of encounter. Among his most recent books are Spanish Society, 1348-1700, 2nd edition (2017), and The Western Mediterranean and the World: ca. 500 to the Present (2018).
