Current PhD Students by Primary Field of Study
Ancient | Africa | Atlantic World | East Asia | Europe (Medieval, Early Modern, Modern) | Latin America | Middle East | South Asia | History of Science, Technology, Environment, and Medicine (STEaM) | United States
Ancient
Qizhen Xie
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Graham Oliver
Research Interests: Development of administration and bureaucracy in the Hellenistic world.
Atlantic World
Imen Boussayoud
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Emily A Owens
Research Interests: Iberian Atlantic world; Intersections of gender/sexuality and race; Libidinal economies; Transmuting of cultural practices across the Atlantic.
Sherri Cummings
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor:
Research Interests: African Atlantic, early African American History, and Africana intellectual thought.
(Anne) Brooke Grasberger
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Linford Fisher
Research Interests: The spiritual lives of sailors as an insight into exploring what the sea does to people and what people see in it.
Phoebe Labat
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Linford Fisher
Research Interests: Native American history, British and French Atlantic World, colonial America, environmental history, Indigenous knowledge, religious history.
Marley-Vincent Lindsey
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor:
Research Interests: Transformation of class consciousness among the Nahua in sixteenth-century New Spain, and the effects of fifteenth-century Iberia on Spanish colonial society.
East Asia
Yu-chi Chang
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Rebecca Nedostup
Research Interests: State-building and Nationalism in Modern China, Political Culture, Knowledge Production, Intellectual and Cultural History, History of Maps.
Dissertation: "Imagining the Loss: Maps, Geographic Knowledge, and the Formation of Modern Chinese Nation-State"
Keegan Cothern
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Kerry Smith
Research Interests: Modern Japan and East Asia as a whole; environmental history and natural disasters; climate change; science and technology; infrastructure development and urbanization.
Yu-cheng Shih
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Rebecca Nedostup
Research Interests: Modern East Asia, maritime communities, immigration, historical memory, folk religion, cold war, and legacies of Japanese colonization in China and Taiwan.
Aaron Stark
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Kerry Smith
Research Interests: Modern Japan, modern Korea, empire and colonialism, environmental history, history of science, mobility studies.
Lillian Tsay
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Kerry Smith
Research Interests: Modern Japan and East Asia, history of food, history of the body, business and commercial history, material culture.
Daisy Wan Yuk Ping
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Brian G Lander
Research Interests: Ancient China, bamboo and wooden manuscripts, historical geography and environmental history, history of warfare and frontier formation, urban history, material culture.
Medieval Europe
Paul Aste
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Jonathan Conant
Research interests: Early Medieval monasticism; local priests; popular belief; identity and belonging.
Julia Balakrishnan
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Amy Remensnyder
Research Interests: Interreligious interactions; the High Medieval Mediterranean; the Islamic World; pluralistic identities.
Sarah Christensen
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Jonathan Conant
Research Interests: Gender and migration in the Viking diaspora; the Viking slave trade.
Stacey Murrell
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Amy Remensnyder
Research Interests: gender/sexuality, power, medievalism, the intersection(s) of race and gender, the history of the family, burials, and memory.
Ayse Topaloglu
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Amy Remensnyder
Research Interests: The history of violence and crime with a focus on Italy.
Dillon Webster
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor:
Research Interests: The ethno-religious make up of the western Mediterranean, specifically the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb.
Early Modern Europe
Tamar Golinsky
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Tara Nummedal
Mayer Juni
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Tara Nummedal
Research Interests: Early modern knowledge practices of Europe and the Atlantic World.
Elizabeth Nielsen
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Harold Cook
Research Interests: Early modern medicine and maritime culture, commerce, vernacular science and medicine, and the creation of expertise and cultural authority.
Jongook Yoon
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Tim Harris
Research Interests: British commercial expansion into the Atlantic the ushering in of modernity through domestic industries and colonial agriculture.
Yekai Zhang
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Tim Harris
Research Interests: Early modern British Isles; popular politics, rumours and revolts; memory; political culture; history of ideas in early modern Europe; Atlantic history comparative history between early modern Europe and Ming-Qing China; modernisation; historiography and historical theories.
Modern Europe
Norman Frazier
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Michael Steinberg
Research Interests: 19th-century Germany: nationalism; urban history; popular music; sound studies. I am broadly interested in the history of nationalism and the politics of sound in nineteenth-century Germany. My research examines spaces and built environments, particularly within cities, where notions of "Germanness" were negotiated along lines of class, region, and religion. My current project considers nationhood within the acoustic world and everyday music practices of Berlin tenements in the late nineteenth century.
Jisoo Hong
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Ethan Pollock
Research Interests: Modern Russia and Soviet Union, Siberia, postwar global economy, Cold War and Détente, materials and materiality, environment.
Alexandra (Ola) Morehead
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Omer Bartov
Research Interests: Ecocide; Comparative Genocide & Holocaust studies, modern Russian & Soviet history, East European Jewish history.
Emily Julia Roche
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Omer Bartov
Research Interests: Jewish history, memory and place, Polish-Soviet relations, communist aesthetics, theories of urbicide, and intellectual history.
Jorge Rosario Rosario
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Omer Bartov
Research Interests: 20th-century Europe, history of the Holocaust, extreme violence, history and memory.
Jenny Lhamo Tsundu
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisors: Holly Case and Bathsheba Demuth
Research Interests: Russia and the Soviet Union; Siberia; histories of planning and the environment; paradoxes of motion and change; temporality; place and poetics.
James Wang
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Omer Bartov
Research Interests: The political and economic history of modern East Central Europe.
Latin America
Thamyris Almeida
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisors: James Green, Jennifer Lambe
Research Interests: Popular culture, national identity, and Cold War-era cultural politics.
Juan J. Bettancourt-García
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Jennifer Lambe
Research Interests: Colonial Latin America and the Atlantic World, Indigenous history, trade, ecology, maritime labor communities, and the African diaspora in the early modern Caribbean.
René Cordero
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Jennifer Lambe
Research Interests: Dominican Republic, Latin American social movements and politics during the Cold War, racial consciousness, anti-imperialism and historical revisionism.
Augusta De Oliveira
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: James Green
Research interests: LGBTQ+ history; feminist theory; social movements; gender/sexuality in modern Latin America.
Marina Dias Lucena Adams
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: James Green
Research Interests: Gender History; Modern Latin America; Social and Political Movements; Political Subjectivity; Memory Studies; Public History.
Luiz Paulo Ferraz
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: James Green
Research Interests: Modern Latin America, specially Brazil; Indigenous History; Transnational History; Environment and Society; Public History.
Fernando Norat
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor:
Research Interests: Relationship between Communism, Nationalism and Anti-Imperialism in the Latin-American left of the 20th century.
Stephanie Wong
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Evelyn Hu-Dehart
Research Interests: Spanish Pacific, global empire, classical reception, material culture, engaged scholarship.
Middle East
Anil Askin
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Beshara Doumani
Research Interests: Environmental history, animal studies, history of capitalism, history of science, political economy, early modern and modern Ottoman empire and Middle East.
Kate Elizabeth Creasey
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Beshara Doumani and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
Research Interests: Turkey, Modern Middle East, Central Asia, China in the Middle East (Belt and Road Initiative), North Africa (Tunisia), history of incarceration in the Middle East, visual and material culture, oral history, human rights, military coups/ dictatorships, Cold War counterinsurgency.
Ebru Erginbas
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Beshara Doumani and Faiz Ahmed
Research Interests: U.S. History; Ottoman History; History of Medicine; Gender; Missiology.
Julia Gettle
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Beshara Doumani
Research Interests: Modern Middle East, 20th Century Levant, Arab Nationalism, Mediterranean History, Social and Cultural History, Political and Social Movements.
Maariyah Lateef
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Beshara Doumani and Faiz Ahmed
Research Interests: Late Ottoman history; social history of 19th century Damascus and the broader Middle East; intellectual history; interactions between muftis, kadis, and their communities; Islamic legal and ethical norms.
Dissertation: "An Ottoman Lawmaker Pre-Tanzimat: The Life, Works, & Legacy of Ibn ʿĀbidīn (d. 1836)"
Joseph Leidy
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Beshara Doumani
Research Interests: Social and cultural history of the modern Middle East, particularly Lebanon and Syria; youth and childhood; migration and diaspora; intellectual history; environmental history.
Nadia Tadros
Ph.D. Student
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Advisors: Beshara Doumani and Sreemati Mitter
Research Interests: Palestinian history, modern Middle East, spatial and economic history, urban politics, power structures.
South Asia
Osama Ahmad
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar
Research Interests: Modern South Asia, Colonial Punjab, Social history, Decolonization, Post-Colonial Theory.
Faraz Haider
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar
Research Interests: History of Modern South Asia, Marxism, Nationalism, Islam in South Asia, Critical Theory, Intellectual History of the Left, Urban History.
Devon Newhouse
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar
Research Interests: 20th century India, migration, gender.
Suvaid Yaseen
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar
Research Interests: Modern South Asia, Islam, Intellectual History, Political and Religious Movements.
History of Science, Technology, Environment, and Medicine (STEaM)
Amanda Arceneaux
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Tara Nummedal
Research Interests: Early Modern Europe; History of Science; Book History; Natural History; Pre-Linnaean Botany; Early Modern Information Systems; Manuscript Culture; Materiality.
George Elliott
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Tara Nummedal
Research Interests: Anglo-American alchemy, early modern history of science, history of the laboratory, early modern medical practice, early colonial New England history, Atlantic world.
United States
Betsy Archelus
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Naoko Shibusawa
Research Interests: Modern U.S and the Pacific; colonialism and empire; military prostitution and gendered state violence; Blackness; race and race making.
Kimonee Burke
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Linford Fisher
Research Interests: Native American and Indigenous Studies, Northeastern Indigenous History, Federal Indian Policy, Federal Acknowledgment Policy.
Max Conley
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Bathsheba Demuth
Research Interests: Environmental History & Humanities, Energy History, Whales, 19th Century U.S. Empire, Pacific World, Capitalism, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Disability Justice.
Michael Dorney
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Naoko Shibusawa
Research Interests: American & Japanese Imperialism, Asian America, Journalism History, WWII-era Japanese Incarceration.
Taaja El-Shabazz
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Françoise Hamlin
Research Interests: African-American history, labor history, history of U.S. Empire, women’s history.
Aaron Jacobs
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Robert Self
Research interests: state violence and vigilantism in the Jim Crow era; histories of race and collective memory; history of film, especially relating to cultures of spectatorship; theater and performance studies.
Dissertation: “When Lightning Strikes Twice: Cinema, Race, Empire and the Re-Birth of the Ku Klux Klan.”
Takuya Maeda
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Naoko Shibusawa
Research Interests: Asian American identity and politics in the 20th century U.S. with a focus on Japanese American interment and redress, how traditional notions of communal history, group membership, ethnic identity, and political activism are being challenged by the influx of post-1965 Japanese immigrants.
Rebecca Marisseau
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Seth Rockman
Research Interests: Early American republic with a focus in statecraft, science and technology, capitalism, and material culture.
Dissertation: "A Well-Oiled Machine: New Bedford Whale Fishery and the Production of the Early American State"
Sarah Pearlman Shapiro
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Seth Rockman
Research Interests: Early America with a focus on gender, medicine, and violence.
Dissertation: "Women’s Communities of Care in Revolutionary New England"
Emily Pierson
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Linford Fisher
Research Interests: The use of cemeteries in the shaping of identity, especially regarding questions of inclusion and exclusion, and the relationship of the living and the dead.
Dissertation: "Living with the City of the Dead: Place and Community in Nineteenth-Century American Garden Cemeteries"
Leslie-William T. Robinson
Ph.D. Candidate
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Advisor: Robert Self
Research Interests: Twentieth-century US war and society, medical, labor, and intellectual history. More broadly I am interested in scholarship aimed at the advancement of peace.
Dissertation: "Military Medicine, Morale, and the Management of Men: Affective Labor for Worker Control in the Early Twentieth-Century United States"
Joseph Williams
Ph.D. Student
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Advisor: Françoise Hamlin
Research Interests: Twentieth century United States history, African American history, and the black freedom struggle.