Rate My Professor John Grigg

John Grigg, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he also serves as the History faculty advisor. Born in New Zealand and raised in Australia, he initially graduated from the University of Queensland with a degree in chemistry. Prior to entering academia, Dr. Grigg held various positions, including accounts clerk, taxi driver, youth leader, urban missionary, and hotel clerk. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Kansas under the direction of Dr. Peter C. Mancall. His research interests encompass Early America, Atlantic History, and Global Encounters from 1500 to 1800, with particular emphasis on religious upheavals in New England and New Jersey during the 1730s and 1740s, social conditions in New Jersey circa 1700-1765, and the role of conspiracy theories in American history. Dr. Grigg was recognized for 15 years of service to the University of Nebraska system in 2021.

Dr. Grigg has published several articles and presented papers on colonial religious history. His key works include the monograph The Lives of David Brainerd: The Making of an American Evangelical Icon (Oxford University Press, 2009), which explores the life and posthumous reinterpretation of the eighteenth-century missionary David Brainerd. He edited British Colonial America: People and Perspectives (ABC-CLIO, 2008) and contributed the chapter "Missions" to The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford University Press, 2021). Other publications feature "'Ye relief of ye poor of sd towne': Poverty and Localism in Eighteenth-Century New Jersey" in New Jersey History (2010). He frequently teaches courses such as Colonial America (HIST 4140/8146), Religion in Early America (HIST 4010/8016), American History to 1865 (HIST 1110), and graduate seminars in Early America and Global Encounters. Currently, Dr. Grigg is examining local communities in eighteenth-century New Jersey.