Rwany Sibaja* is a first-generation scholar, born in Long Branch, NJ, to parents who immigrated from Costa Rica in the 1960s. Raised across the U.S. (Los Angeles, Miami, Fayetteville, NC) and in Costa Rica, he now makes his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. The constant moving to new locations furthered his interest in identities—how societies and individuals build, re-imagine, and challenge them over time.
Rwany is committed to public education and the role it plays transforming lives. The late Kofi Annan once said that “Education is the great equalizer of our time. It gives hope to the hopeless and creates chances for those without.” These words have resonated with Rwany. He experienced firsthand how state funding for public education opened doors and unforeseen opportunities, first through his experience as a NC Teaching Fellow, and later by working in Davidson County, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, and Orange County Schools in N.C. He continues to work in education by empowering the next generation of social studies educators at Appalachian State University as the Director for History Education.
Sibaja earned his PhD in History from George Mason University specializing in Latin America, with particular interests in popular culture, sports, and recreation and leisure. His secondary interests focus on modern Britain (mass culture), digital history, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, or SoTL.
Rwany’s upcoming book, tentatively entitled Civilization and Barbarism in Argentine Soccer, explores the role of fútbol in what Argentines label “el ser nacional” (sense of national being or identity) between the 1910s and early 1970s. He examines how fans, players, coaches, and journalists re-imagined national identity through a soccer discourse in line with a politics of respectability. This led to concerns over modernity, social propriety (i.e. violence on and off the field), knowledge, and proper forms of masculinity. Rwany’s works have appeared in the International Journal of the History of Sport, The Latin Americanist, Journal of Sport History, and Soccer & Society, and he has contributed to pieces on education and sports for National Public Radio (NPR). (See his CV for a complete record.)
As a sports scholar and educator, Rwany is an active member of the Football Scholars Forum, the North American Society for Sport History, the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies, and the North Carolina Council for the Social Studies. He has also been involved in various digital humanities and SoTL groups in an effort to learn from, and work alongside, colleagues from a wide variety of disciplines.
Prior to joining Appalachian State University, Rwany served as a postdoctoral fellow for faculty diversity at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), as a research assistant at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason, and as the K-12 Program Manager for Social Studies at WS/FCS. His career began teaching Spanish and History at the high school level.
He enjoys beautiful mountain views from his home in Deep Gap, NC, alongside his wife, two college-aged children, a rambunctious Brittany dog named Django, and a nice cup of cafecito or mate.
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