Ruth Mostern is an Associate Professor and a member of the Founding Faculty at the University of California, Merced. She received her Ph.D. from the UC Berkeley Department of History. Before joining the UC Merced faculty in 2004, she was Head of Collection Development at the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, a Berkeley-based international consortium promoting the use of GIS and digital library technologies for communicating about culture and history.
Her research focuses on historical geography. She is interested in the relationship between territory and state power in imperial China; and in developing methods to improve digital maps and timelines that support visualization and analysis in history and cultural heritage.