Robert Mevissen

Dr. Robert Mevissen joined Culver-Stockton College in Fall 2023. He arrived after teaching for five years at the State University of New York at Old Westbury. He teaches courses on global, contemporary, and environmental themes. His research interests are the environmental history of the Habsburg Monarchy and contemporary Europe.

Dr. Mevissen's professional development has enabled him to live in France, Hungary, and Austria for over six years. He was awarded two Fulbright scholarships: one as a combined grantee in Vienna, Austria to teach English and study at the University of Vienna (2009-10), another as a research grantee in Hungary (2015-16), where he undertook his dissertation research studying local communities' reactions to and participation in engineering works along the Danube River. In 2013, he co-led a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Diversity trip to Berlin, Germany through Georgetown University. In addition, he was awarded a Department of Education Foreign Language Area Scholarship (2014) to study Hungarian at the University of Pittsburgh and at the University of Debrecen in Hungary.

In 2026, he was awarded Culver-Stockton College’s Walter S. Reuling Prize for Innovation in Student Learning based on his enthusiasm for experiential learning, which includes interdisciplinary travel study domestically and abroad, historical simulations, and cooking in his global history and food class.

He lives in Canton, with his wife and three children. They enjoy baking, hiking, and speaking German together.

Publications

“The Danube and the Dynasty: The Making of a Modern, Mobile Monarchy,” European Review of History / Revue européenne d'histoire 32, issue 6 (2026): 670–92. doi:10.1080/13507486.2025.2511715

The Danube Empire: An Environmental History of Habsburg State-Building and Civic Engagement. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025

“Riparian Rivalries and River Politics: The Danube Question and Diplomacy in the Late Habsburg Monarchy” in Exploiting the Environment, Making an Empire: The Late Habsburg Experiences with Nature, eds. Jawad Daheur and Iva Lučić, 27—51. New York: Berghahn Books, 2025.

Review: Luminita Gatejel. Engineering the Lower Danube: Technology and International Cooperation in an Imperial Borderland. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2022. Pp. 348. Austrian History Yearbook. Published online 2024:1-2. doi:10.1017/S0067237824000110

“Forged in the Floods: Transnational Networks in the Habsburg Monarchy.” Water History 12 (2020): 265–280. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-020-00262-4

“Meandering Circumstances, Fluid Associations: Shaping Riverine Transformations in the Late Habsburg Monarchy.” Austrian History Yearbook 49 (2018): 23-40.