Ray Ball grew up in Oklahoma and Texas and majored in History at the University of Oklahoma. She received her PhD in History from Ohio State in 2010 and has taught at Kenyon College, Minnesota State University, and the University of Alaska Anchorage. She was the recipient of a research Fulbright to Spain in 2006-2007 and has also spent time conducting research in archives and libraries in Cuba, Mexico, and Italy.
Dr. Ball is an Associate Professor of History and International Studies at the University of Alaska Anchorage, where she teaches courses that span the medieval to the modern world. Her primary area of expertise is the Spanish Empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but she is generally interested in the interactions and entanglements of people living during the premodern era. Her academic work centers on the intersections of the political and the cultural. She loves researching in archives and the tactile and sensory experience of engaging with manuscripts from the past. She has also been actively working on digital humanities projects, including the Cuba in the Classroom Digital Archive.
She is committed to seeking opportunities for undergraduates, particularly through undergraduate research. She has advised UAA's Phi Alpha Theta Chapter and served on task forces for undergraduate research and scholarship and as the Faculty Liaison for Major Scholarships. Ball has been the recipient of a number of grants and honors including the 2016 Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, a 2017 award from the UAA Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence, and the 2018 Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activity.
Ray is currently a member of the executive council of the Sixteenth Century Society and Council and the board of directors for the Association of Spanish and Portuguese Historical Society. She is book reviews editor or Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies.
Ray also writes poetry and fiction. Many of her poems include historical and methodological aspects. Her late father was a herpetologist and a number of her works include references to snakes. She is a poetry editor at Coffin Bell: A Journal of Dark Literature and on the editorial team at Alaska Women Speak.
In her spare time, she enjoys running, hiking, and drinking microbrews.