Profile

Professor Robert Perrins, Ph.D. is the Vice President, Academic Affairs at American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. Professor Perrins joins the University from Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles, California, where he served for six years as the Mount’s Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. Professor Perrins comes to AUIS with a tremendous amount of international experience in higher education, having conducted research, taught, and lived in a number of countries around the world. 

Professor Perrins’s career spans three decades in academia, during which time he served as a faculty member and senior academic administrator in a number of universities in Canada, China, and the United States. He earned his doctoral degree in history from York University in Toronto, Canada, where his training and research focused on the histories of China, Japan, and Africa. Over the past thirty years, his teaching and research have further explored the global histories of science, medicine, and disease -- work that includes his internationally recognized research on the histories of pandemics (including influenza, cholera, and plague), as well as the histories of modern China and Japan. 

A recipient of numerous academic awards and honors, Professor Perrins most recently received the Excellence in Teaching and Professor of the Year Award for the Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Liberal Arts, at Mount Saint Mary’s University’s Weekend and Evening College in 2021. During the 2021-2022 academic year he was the Senior Visiting Research Fellow at Shanghai University, where his fellowship was jointly sponsored by the University’s International Center for Drug Policy Studies, and its College of Liberal Arts. 

Professor Perrins, or Bob as he is more commonly referred to, believes in the transformative potential of education to change the lives of students, their families, and their communities. He is passionate about not only his research, but also his teaching, and engages his students to pursue their passions and to constantly strive for excellence in their academic and career aspirations.