It wasn’t until he found himself thousands of kilometers from his native Australia in September 2001 that Coller, a UCLA-Irvine professor of history, began to realize that his seemingly disparate early interests in French culture, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, his longing to understand the Middle East and his determination to speak Arabic were all parts of his innate fascination with people. But in the aftermath of 9/11, Coller realized that as much as he loved literature, his true passion was the past. Since then Coller has carved out a niche in his field by examining the evolution of ties between Muslims and Europeans over the centuries.