Historical Travel Briefings
Understand the history behind the places you're about to visit.
A PhD historian prepares you with the context, stories, and cultural depth behind your itinerary - delivered as a live briefing, a recorded series, or day-by-day guidance for your group.
The Process
Three steps to a richer journey
Share your itinerary
Send your travel plans - cities, sites, dates, and anything that sparks your curiosity. No research required on your end.
Receive your briefing
A historian researches your specific route and destinations, then delivers a live briefing - or a recorded series you take with you - connecting the places you'll see to the larger story behind them.
Travel with deeper context
Walk through Prague, Vienna, or Rome already knowing what happened there - the conflicts, the characters, the ideas that shaped what you're looking at.
What I Offer
Three ways to travel with context
Private Trip Briefing
$300–$450
A 60–90 minute live Zoom briefing based on your itinerary, plus concise reading and listening recommendations for the road. The lightest option - ideal for a single trip where you want the story before you go.
- Live video session, tailored to your route
- Q&A throughout
- Curated reading & audio list
- Recording available on request
Custom Travel Companion
$750–$1,250
A recorded itinerary-specific briefing or 3–4 short modules covering each destination on your trip, plus one live Q&A session. Watch before you arrive at each city, then ask what's still on your mind.
- 3–4 recorded modules, 20–40 min each
- One live Q&A session
- Watch on your phone or tablet
- Yours to keep and rewatch
Group & Institutional Briefing
$500–$900+
For a college, cultural group, alumni trip, family group, or travel-advisor client group. A 60–90 minute live session tailored to the group's itinerary, with optional day-by-day virtual briefings for longer trips - "today you'll see xyz, here's what to look for." One buyer, many travelers.
- Live session for your whole group
- Day-by-day virtual briefings available
- Recorded or live, depending on package
- Ideal for 10–30 travelers
- Customized for your organization
About
A historian who travels with you - before you go
I'm a PhD historian who has spent over two decades teaching European, world, and intellectual history at the college level. I've led multiple study tours across England, Wales, Cornwall, and Scotland - each one built around the idea that a place means more when you know the story behind it.
The idea for Strabo came from two moments. A professor friend asked me to prepare a 90-minute history lecture for her college study tour to Prague, tailored to the students' itinerary. Later, a relative visited Vienna and told me he wished someone had briefed him on the history and culture before he arrived - he would have experienced the city differently.
That's the gap Strabo fills. Travel agents book the trip. Tour guides meet you at the site. Podcasts and guidebooks give you fragments. What's missing is a historian who sits down with your itinerary, does the research, and tells you the story that connects everything you're about to see.
Expertise
Modern European history (1750–present), with a specialization in France and the Atlantic world. Medieval European history as a minor field. Research interests include the history of Christianity, imperialism, Atlantic history, and western intellectual history. My dissertation examined political violence and religious change in nineteenth-century France.
Teaching & Study Tours
I taught courses spanning ancient civilizations through modern Europe, including a recurring summer study tour on Tolkien, fantasy, and the Middle Ages that traveled to England and Wales. I created and directed a Politics, History, and International Relations program, and I'm currently adjunct faculty in Lincoln, Nebraska.
From a Client
Ben prepared a 90-minute historical briefing for my students traveling to Prague, tailored to our exact itinerary. It gave them the context they needed to understand what they were seeing - and they were genuinely excited to arrive.Tanya Cochran
Professor and Study Tour Leader
Why “Strabo”?
Two thousand years ago, a Greek geographer named Strabo wrote the Geographica - a description of the entire known world. He could have filled it with coordinates and measurements. Instead he wrote about people: the history, politics, and customs that gave each place its character. He wrote for readers who needed to understand somewhere, not just locate it. And he had walked most of it himself, from Etruria to Ethiopia.
That’s the idea behind this service. Your itinerary already tells you where you’re going. What it doesn’t tell you is why any of it matters.
Get Started
Tell me where you're going
Send your itinerary, your questions, or just a destination you're curious about. I'll reply with what I can prepare and what it will cost. No obligation, no template - just a conversation about your trip.