Laura Westhoff is a professor specializing in the fields of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, American democracy and social movements, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning History (SoTL), and the history of education. She is the author of A Fatal Drifting Apart: Democratic Social Knowledge and Chicago Reform (2007) which examines social constructions of knowledge and the emerging tensions between democracy and expertise in modern America. 

She holds a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Washington University in St. Louis and has published in the Journal of American History, The History Teacher, Women’s History Review, and the History of Education Quarterly. She is currently working on a book on mid-twentieth century democratic practices, titled Educating for Activism.

As a joint appointment in the College of Education and the Department of History at UMSL, Dr. Westhoff is committed to advancing history education at all levels. She is active in social studies certification at UMSL, and she has served as co-author and lead historian on several Teaching American History grants. She is a frequent presenter at history workshops and colloquia for teachers. She serves as the faculty coordinator for the Student Teaching in China program.