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is Assistant Professor of History at Northern Illinois University. He received his Ph.D. in African history from York University (2007). His dissertation project, The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, Abolition of Slavery and Transformations in the North African Regency of Tunis, 1759–1846, explores the interplay between the caravan slave trade, abolitionism, and economic and political processes in 18th- and mid-19th-century Tunisia, and the western Mediterranean more generally. Montana has been Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Trent University (Canada). His research interests range from the social and economic history of slavery in Northwest Africa and the Islamic world in the 18th and 19th centuries to development cooperation between the European Union and African, Caribbean, and Pacific States in the post cold war era. He has published several articles based on this research including Ahmad Ibn al-Qadi al-Timbuktawi on the Bori Ceremonies of Sudan-Tunis, in: Paul E. Lovejoy (ed.), Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam (2003), and has edited a volume with Paul E. Lovejoy and Behnaz Mirzai Asl: Islam, Slavery and Diaspora, Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, [in Press: forthcoming July-August 2008]. Montana lectures on African history, slavery, and its abolition on the African continent, the African Diaspora, as well as the history of Islam in Africa.