Nikki Berg Burin

History 104: United States since 1877

History 220: North Dakota History

History 240: The Historian's Craft

History 331: Seminar in the History of the Great Plains

History 332: American Women's History to 1865

WGS 225: Introduction to Women Studies

Dr. Berg Burin’s current research focuses on the history of sexual violence and exploitation in early North Dakota and the ethics of telling that history in the 21st century. Her ongoing book project includes chapters on topics such as rape and sexual assault, age of consent and statutory rape, seduction, and commercial sexual exploitation and explores the impact of these crimes on victims, perpetrators, families, and communities, as well as on the culture and identity of North Dakota. Though such crimes happen everywhere, Dr. Berg Burin is especially interested in how the unique context of North Dakota - culture, geography, politics, demographics, etc. - shaped residents' diverse experiences with and responses to sexual violence and exploitation past and present. She has received several grants from the UND College of Arts and Sciences to hire undergraduate research assistants to collaborate on various projects related to this research. Most recently, Dr. Berg Burin has worked with three undergraduate History majors building a database of over 1000 unique incidents of sexual violence and exploitation reported by Dakota Territory and North Dakota newspapers between 1861-1920.

Dr. Berg Burin's most recent publication focuses on debates over the legal age of sexual consent in Dakota Territory.

• '"Protection the Wolf Gives the Lamb": The Battle to Raise the Age of Sexual Consent in Dakota Territory," North Dakota History: Journal of the Northern Plains, Vol. 88, No. 1, 2024.

Upcoming publications include:

• "Taking a Victim-Centered Approach to the History of Sexual Violence: A Case Study in Early North Dakota," in Gender and Sexuality in the Midwest, edited by Katherine Jellison, University of Ohio Press (forthcoming)
• "Slogum House and Buying Sex in the American West," in Sandoz Studies, Volume 3: Sandoz and Slogum House, edited by Renee M. Laegreid, University of Nebraska Press (forthcoming).

Dr. Berg Burin has also published on the history of prostitution and sex trafficking in North Dakota:

• “Boomtown Bias: Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of Prostitution and Sex Trafficking in North Dakota.” Sixty Years of Boom and Bust: The Impact of Oil in North Dakota, 1958-2018, edited by Kyle Conway, The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, 2020.
• “Public Discourse on the Rise and Regulation of the Illicit Sex Trade During North Dakota’s Economic Booms.” The Bakken Goes Boom: Oil and the Changing Geographies of Western North Dakota, edited by William Caraher and Kyle Conway, The Digital Press of the University of North Dakota, 2016.

Dr. Berg Burin's interest in sex trafficking and modern day slavery was preceded by her interest in 19th-century slavery. Her first area of research focused on women slaveholders and plantation managers in Mississippi in the three decades before the Civil War. See, for example:

• “A Family Firm: The Marital and Business Partnership of Ann and Richard Archer,” in Family Values in the Old South, edited by Craig T. Friend and Anya Jabour,  University Press of Florida, 2009.

In 2023, Dr. Berg Burin was awarded the UND Foundation's Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award.

In 2019, UND and the city of Grand Forks presented Dr. Berg Burin with one of the inaugural Dr. Martin Luther King "Dream in Action" awards, which recognizes organizations or individuals who work to create and inspire social change at UND and in the greater Grand Forks community. This award reflects her passion for engaging in public outreach as a scholar and for bringing a historical perspective to present-day problem solving. Notably, she was actively engaged in collaborative efforts to combat human trafficking in North Dakota, serving on the original Advisory Committee for North Dakota’s anti-human trafficking organization FUSE and as a consultant for the North Dakota Human Trafficking Task Force. She also previously served as a member of UND's Center for Human Rights and Genocide Studies and was a board member for the anti-human trafficking organization Historians Against Slavery.

University of Minnesota – Ph.D. (History), 2007

University of North Dakota – M.A. (History), 2002

Concordia College, Moorhead, MN – B.A. (History, Classical Studies), 2000