Nikki Berg Burin

Biography

Nikki Berg Burin earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of Minnesota in 2007. Dr. Berg Burin’s current research project explores the development of statutory rape law and its impact on victims, perpetrators, and communities in Progressive-era North Dakota.  Her most recent publications have focused on the history of North Dakota's prostitution and sex trafficking laws (published in Sixty Years of Boom and Bust: The Impact of Oil in North Dakota, 1958–2018, The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, 2020) and public discourse on sex workers and sex trafficking victims during the state's economic booms (published in The Bakken Goes Boom: Oil and the Changing Geographies of Western North Dakota, The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, 2016). Dr. Berg Burin’s interest in modern day slavery was preceded by her interest in antebellum slavery.  Her first area of research focused on female plantation managers in Mississippi in the three decades before the Civil War. A portion of that scholarship was published in Family Values in the Old South (University Press of Florida, 2010).

Dr. Berg Burin has a shared appointment with the Women and Gender Studies Program and serves as the WGS Undergraduate Advisor.  She is also a member of UND's Center for Human Rights and Genocide Studies and a UND Honors Program faculty member.  Additionally, she serves on the board of the anti-human trafficking organization Historians Against Slavery and is faculty advisor for UND's feminist student organization The F Word.

In addition to her scholarly and pedagogical pursuits, Dr. Berg Burin is actively engaged in collaborative efforts to combat human trafficking in North Dakota.  She served on the original Advisory Committee for North Dakota’s anti-human trafficking organization FUSE and has partnered with and served as a consultant for the North Dakota Human Trafficking Task Force.