Category / Professionalization

by emoryhistorydept

Major Hannah Lo Finalist for U.S. State Department Critical Language Program


In the summer of 2025 third-year History major Hannah Lo was a finalist for the U.S. State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) program. The program supports U.S. citizens to develop foreign language and cultural fluencies through intensive summer training abroad. Lo, who is also minoring in quantitative social sciences, was among only four Emory students accepted for 2025. When the Chinese language program she was planning to attend at China’s Dalian University of Technology was cancelled, Lo pivoted to serve as an immigration intern with Asian Americans Advancing Justice and conducted research with Dr. Yami Rodriguez, Assistant Professor, and Dr. Chris Suh, Associate Professor. Read more about the 2025 Emory CLS cohort here.

by emoryhistorydept

Jessica Alvarez Starr to Intern with Puerto Rico Archival Collaboration

Jessica Alvarez Starr, a first-year PhD student, will be serving as an intern with the Puerto Rico Archival Collaboration (PRAC) Summer 2025 Graduate Student Internship Program. As part of this 8-week program, Jessica will gain valuable exposure to collections in the Archivo General de Puerto Rico (AGPR) and the University of Puerto Rico’s Colección Puertorriqueña (CPR). Jessica will work alongside archivists to aid in organizing, transcribing, and digitizing efforts for the AGPR while developing their own research project on enslavement and emancipation practices in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. As an intern, Jessica will receive a stipend to cover travel and living costs for their work in San Juan. They are grateful for the opportunity to conduct archival research, gain preservation skills, and develop connections with scholars to advance their studies. Read more information about the PRAC internship. Their dissertation, tentatively titled “Revolutionary Rhetoric: Antislavery and Anticolonial Alliances in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico,” is advised by Drs. Adriana Chira and Yanna Yannakakis.



by emoryhistorydept

Six History Honors Students Named Fox Center Fellows

The Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry

Six undergraduate honors students from the Emory History Department are among the 2024-25 cohort of Undergraduate Humanities Honors Fellows at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry. These fellowships support up to 12 students completing honors projects in a Humanities or Humanistic Social Science field. The goal of these Fellowships is to support undergraduates as they complete their theses, introduce them to the life of the Humanities, and provide a venue for interdisciplinary interchange, mentorship, and conference-style presentation. View short profiles of the students below and follow the links to more extended biographies.

Emilyn Hazelbrook is a senior majoring in history on the pre-law track. Her honors thesis project will map the trajectory of the battered woman legal defense from 1970 to 2000 in the United States.

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Klaire Mason is a double major in history and creative writing. Her honors research will focus on opposition and repression leading up to Putin’s election to a third term and how it changed Russia’s trajectory.

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Mercedes Sarah is a senior at Emory studying history and English & creative writing. Her honors thesis explores the Indigenous methodologies, the role of the archive, and oral history in the context of Indigenous California. 

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Alex Minovici is a senior majoring in History and Philosophy, Politics, & Law. Her thesis explores how modern political engagement in democratic Romania is influenced by the memory of the 1989 Revolution.

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Adelaide Rosene is a senior studying History with a minor in English. Her thesis project titled “Shadows of Exclusion: The Legacy of Sundown Towns In Wisconsin” examines how communities enforced racial segregation through policing and discrimination in housing.

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Charlotte Weinstein is a senior majoring in History and minoring in Ethics. Her honors thesis explores the ideological shifts within the Czech and Slovak punk music scenes through political transition and the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993.

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by emoryhistorydept

Alumni Update: Bronwen Boyd (C22), from Atlanta to Tunisia, the US Senate, and Sciences Po


Bronwen Boyd, a History Honors student and French Studies major, graduated from Emory College in May 2022. Boyd took a gap year following graduation, during which she worked for the Carter Center as a nonpartisan elections observer on the 2022 Tunisian Parliamentary Elections and for US Senator Jon Ossoff and the Congressional Commission on Emerging Biotechnology. She is currently pursuing a Master’s in Political Science as a Shepard Scholar from Emory at Sciences Po’s Paris School of Research. Her thematic interests include violence against women, LGBTQIA+ rights, human rights, law, and global history and politics. In 2022 Boyd was named a Graduating Woman of Excellence by the Center for Women at Emory. Boyd writes that she is a “Proud Emory History alumna— now and always!”

Are you an Emory History alumnus? Please send us updates on your life and work!

by emoryhistorydept

First-Year Graduate Students Present Research at Hi-Five Presentations

The first-year cohort of doctoral students recently presented their research at the History Department’s annual Hi-Five gathering. Adapted from the University of Queensland’s Three Minute Thesis model, the Hi-Five charges students to put forth a sound, compelling, and accessible distillation of their research. Five first-year History Department students presented their work:

See images of the event below and learn more about these students’ research on their graduate student webpages.

Bruna Cerveira
Emilie Cunning
Ashley Tan
Gerardo Manrique de Lara Ruiz
Rene Odanga
by abritt

Hannah Abrahamson Hired at College of the Holy Cross

Hannah Abrahamson, a doctoral candidate graduating in the summer of 2022, has been hired as Assistant Professor of Early Modern Latin American History at the College of the Holy Cross. Abrahamson completed her dissertation, titled “Women of the Encomienda: Households and Dependents in Sixteenth-Century Yucatan, Mexico,” under the advisement of Drs. Yanna Yannakakis, Javier Villa-Flores, and Tonio Andrade. She looks forward to teaching courses on gender and sexuality and Indigenous history at the Worcester, MA, liberal arts college in the upcoming academic year.

by abritt

First Year PhD Cohort Delivers Hi-Five Research Talks

The first-year cohort of the History doctoral program recently presented their research in the annual Hi-Five end-of-year gathering. The format was adapted from the Three Minute Thesis model, developed by the University of Queensland (UQ) in Australia. See the flier above for the names of the graduate students who presented and their research, and check out the images from the event below.

by abritt

Alumni Update: Jeffrey S. Reznick (PhD, 1999)

Jeffrey S. Reznick (PhD 1999), chief of the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health (NIH), has written the first study of Rudolf H. Sauter (1895–1977), the German-born artist, poet, cultural observer and nephew of the famed novelist John Galsworthy. To be published by Anthem Press in January 2022, War and Peace in the Worlds of Rudolf H. Sauter: A Cultural History of a Creative Life reveals its subject as a creative figure in his own right who produced an intriguing body of artistic and literary work spanning from World War I through the Cold War. Additionally, connected to his leadership of the NLM History of Medicine Division, Reznick recently co-authored “History matters: in the past, present & future of the NLM” in the Journal of the Medical Library Association. The article explains how—since the release of the 2015 report of the NIH’s Director’s advisory committee on the future of the National Library of Medicine—history continues to matter at NLM with its History of Medicine Division achieving many collaborative contributions toward the advancement of the library in the 21st century and for the benefit of historical research today and tomorrow.

by abritt

Doctoral Candidate Anastasiia Strakhova Creates Workshops Amidst Pandemic

Emory’s Tam Institute for Jewish Studies recently published a feature of the pandemic-era work of History doctoral candidate Anastasiia Strakhova, who was the Anne and Bill Newton Graduate Fellow at the Rose Library for 2020-21. After COVID-19 thoroughly derailed her original plans for the fellowship year, Strakhova responded by organizing two virtual workshops on grant writing and the process of conducting research during the pandemic, respectively. Strakhova won a highly competitive Summer Dissertation Writing Grant from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), which is currently supporting her work completing the dissertation, titled “Selective Emigration: Border Control and the Jewish Escape in Late Imperial Russia, 1881-1914.” Drs. Eric Goldstein and Ellie R. Schainker are advisors to Strakhova. Read the full article from the Tam Institute here: “Doctoral Candidate Creates Workshops Amidst Pandemic.”

https://www.facebook.com/HistoryAtEmory/posts/1969794469861761
by abritt

Emory News Center Highlights Work of Graduate Fellows Lemos and Strakhova

The Emory News Center recently published a profile of two 2020-’21 graduate fellows from the History Department. Sponsored by the Emory Libraries and Laney Graduate School, graduate fellowships provide graduate students with immersive and meaningful experiences in the following areas: digital humanities, instruction and engagement, research and engagement, data services and the Rose Library. Xanda Lemos, a doctoral candidate in Latin American History, was the fellow in digital humanities at the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship. Anastasiia Strakhova, a doctoral candidate in Modern European History, was the Anne and Bill Newton Graduate Fellow at the Rose Library. Read more about the work that they and the other three fellows contributed across campus over the last year here: “Graduate fellows provide thesis, data and publishing support for students and staff.”