Peter Van Cleave is lecturer of history in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies. His teaching areas include early American history, the American Revolution, the Early American Republic, Immigration and Ethnicity. Along with those, his more specific research areas include the Atlantic World, the Dutch-American Atlantic, the Age of Revolutions and the American Revolution, the political and religious history of the Early American Republic, and religious tolerance and intolerance in the Revolutionary Era.

He has published several articles on the connections between the Netherlands and the United States during the Age of Revolutions, and has presented on topics ranging from John Adams and Atlantic politics, Thomas Jefferson and the "Notes on the State of Virginia," religious tolerance and religious freedom in the Second Great Awakening, the relationship between the Dutch Patriot Revolt and the American Revolution, as well as the legacy of New Netherland and the Dutch in American history. 

He is currently the North American history advisor for the Online History MA Program in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University.