Roy Casagranda

Roy Edward Casagranda is an American political scientist, educator, author and public lecturer. He was a member of the government faculty at Austin Community College District (ACC), where he taught for nineteen years before retiring in 2025.

Casagranda's academic and public lectures have addressed political science, political philosophy, international relations, history and the politics of the Middle East. Austin Community College has also featured him publicly as a government professor.

He is also the author of the historical novel The Blood Throne of Caria, published in 2018.

Education

Casagranda attended the University of Houston, where he received undergraduate and graduate degrees. He later pursued doctoral studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

He completed his doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin in 2017. His doctoral research was interdisciplinary and incorporated political theory, philosophy and the study of political participation.

His dissertation was titled Colonization of the Normative Realm in the Age of Instrumentality.

Academic career

Casagranda's academic career has principally been associated with political science and government. He joined Austin Community College in 2006 and subsequently became a member of its government faculty.

Austin Community College has publicly identified Casagranda as a government professor. The college's retirement records similarly identify him as Government Faculty.

His teaching included government and political institutions, while his public lectures extended into political philosophy, international affairs and history.

During his time at ACC, Casagranda became involved in educational activities outside the traditional classroom. His public lectures frequently placed contemporary political issues within broader historical contexts, particularly when discussing the Middle East, Europe, empire and international relations.

In 2025, Casagranda retired from Austin Community College. The college credited him with nineteen years of service.

Public profile and international lectures

Casagranda developed a wider public audience through recordings of his lectures, which circulated extensively online during the 2020s. Among the most widely viewed was Khalid ibn al-Walid, a Profile of a Warrior, a lecture examining the seventh century military commander Khalid ibn al-Walid within the broader history of the Roman and Persian empires and the early Islamic conquests.

The growing online circulation of Casagranda's lectures was followed by appearances at international institutions and conferences. In February 2023, he spoke at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, delivering a lecture titled What Should Leaders Learn from History?.

Museum of the Future

In 2025, the Museum of the Future in Dubai launched Lessons from the Past, a yearlong lecture series presented by Casagranda. The program consisted of ten lectures examining historical figures, civilizations and political developments and their relevance to Contemporary society.

The series included lectures on subjects such as Ibn Sina, Mehmed II, Khalid ibn al-Walid, the Apache peoples, the Republic of Venice and Cyrus the Great.

According to the 2025 annual report of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives, the ten lectures attracted 1,515 attendees and accumulated 2.5 million views on YouTube.

The Museum of the Future renewed the program for a second season in 2026. The new series again featured monthly lectures by Casagranda and included subjects such as the modern history of the Middle East, rationality and human behavior, the Roman Republic, and the Library of Alexandria.

A lecture on the Roman Republic, delivered at the museum on June 11, 2026, examined the development of the republic over the centuries preceding its final political crisis.

The museum describes Casagranda as a historian, political philosopher and professor of government whose work specializes in Middle Eastern politics, United States foreign policy and political philosophy.

Public approach to history

Although Casagranda's documented academic appointment at Austin Community College was in government, history became an important part of his work as a public lecturer.

His lectures GeneRally approach historical events through political questions rather than treating history as an isolated chronology. They frequently examine the development of states, political institutions, ideologies and international systems.

This approach is especially prominent in his discussions of the Middle East and Mediterranean world, where he has connected ancient and modern political developments with broader questions concerning empire, state formation and international relations.

His Public Work has consequently crossed several disciplines, particularly political science, political philosophy and history.

Writing

Casagranda has written historical fiction in addition to his academic and public educational work.

The Blood Throne of Caria

Casagranda's historical novel The Blood Throne of Caria was published by Sekhmet Liminal Press in 2018.

The novel is centered on Artemisia I of Caria, the ruler of Halicarnassus who fought alongside the forces of the Persian king Xerxes I during the Greco-Persian Wars.

The story combines historical events with fictional reconstruction and follows Artemisia's development and political rise in the ancient Mediterranean world.

Library and bookselling records classify the work as historical fiction. Open Library records the book as a 2018 publication of Sekhmet Liminal Press and lists its ISBN as 978-1-7324775-1-3.

OverDrive also catalogs the novel as historical fiction and identifies it as part of the Empire of the Nightingale series.

Critical reception

Kirkus Reviews reviewed The Blood Throne of Caria in September 2018.

The review described the novel as a historical story centered on a Carian princess confronting the social and political restrictions imposed on women in the ancient world. It praised the pace of the narrative and Casagranda's handling of the central character while also identifying weaknesses in repetition and characterization.

The review ultimately described the novel as a gripping and fast paced adventure.

External links

• Roy Casagranda at Kirkus Reviews