Katherine A. Hermes is chair of the History Department at Central Connecticut State University (2012-), where she has taught since 1997. She was co-coordinator of the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at CCSU from 2006-2008. Formerly she was a lecturer in history at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, from 1992-1997. She received her law degree (J.D., 1992) from Duke University School of Law and her Ph.D. in History (1995) from Yale University. Her fields of specialty are Early American history, the Atlantic World, legal history and Native American history. She is currently working on a project studying concepts of harm in North American indigenous and colonial societies.