About Jack Werner

I'm a Ph.D. Candidate in History at the University of Maryland, College Park. My dissertation, "The Making of Colonial Disability and Labor in the United States and the Philippines, 1898-1919” is a history of U.S. colonial rule in the Philippines that analyzes how ideas about disability, race, and labor changed through imperial policies and specific labor regimes. I have previously published in the Journal of Military History as well as TIME Online.

The point of life is to become someone that you were not in the beginning.

NBN Episodes hosted by Jack:

Justin F Jackson, "The Work of Empire: War, Occupation, and the Making of American Colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines" (UNC Press, 2025)

June 10, 2026

The Work of Empire

Justin F Jackson
Hosted by Jack Werner

In 1898, on the eve of the Spanish-American War, the US Army seemed minuscule and ill-equipped for global conflict. Yet over the next fifteen years, i…