in the National Records Office of Sudan. He obtained an MA in History at Oxford University during that year, and entered Yale in 1957. Collins was awarded a PhD in 1959. His dissertation, The Mahdist invasions of the Southern Sudan, 1883-1898 (1959) was based on his MA research and published "virtually unrevised" as The Southern Sudan, 1883-1898. A struggle for control by Yale University Press in 1962. Academic career After intervals at Williams College (1959-1965) and Columbia University (1962-1963), Collins moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara where he worked for the remainder of his career as a Professor of History (1965-1994). His colleagues there included C. Warren Hollister, Wilbur Jacobs, and Roderick Nash. He also served as Dean of UCSB's Graduate Division (1970-1980), the Director of the Center for Developing Nations (1968-1969), and the Director of the University of California's Washington Center in Washington, DC. (1992-1994). In 1972, Collins chaired the University of California Library Task Force and wrote the committee's report, which led to the establishment of the Division of Library Automation and the Melvyl system. He retired from the University of California Santa Barbara in 1994. He continued to teach, write, and mentor students after his retirement. Collins was an avid collector of documents, pamphlets, photographs, books, and other materials related to Sudan and East Africa; and, in 1997, he donated his substantial library and primary research materials to Durham University's Sudan Archive. Collin donated his diary relating to his work as a professor and university administrator to the library at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It describes the Isla Vista riots that followed the denial of tenure to Bill Allen, a popular Professor of Anthropology. Southern Sudan historical retrieval project Collins made an important contribution to the National Archives of South Sudan by providing an early inventory of district files and filing systems. Following the Addis Ababa Agreement (1972), Enoch Mading de Garang, the Regional Minister of Information, Culture, Youth and Sports in Southern Sudan's High Executive Council (HEC) government, began work on an archive of Southern Sudanese political movements. In 1976, Robert Collins traveled with his wife, Janyce, to southern Sudan, after being invited there by E.M. Garang to compile a report on ways to collect and preserve materials related to Southern Sudan's recent history as part of the Southern Sudan Historical Retrieval Project. Collins consulted scholars and officials, visited the proposed sites