Graduate Student News
Graduate Student News
Our PhD program continues to be vibrant and thriving. Here is a roundup of the latest accomplishments of our wonderful graduate students.
Ming-hsi Chu published the article “Competing interpretations of international law: Law and politics in the war crimes trials of Nationalist China, 1946–1949” in the Leiden Journal of International Law (2025), 38(2), 299–321. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0922156524000232
Ramon Martin Co was conferred the Frank Gibney Award by the Journal of American-East Asian Relations (JAEAR). The Award goes to an article written by a graduate student in any country on relations of any sort between the Americas and East and Southeast Asia, as well as Asian American history and culture. Brill Publishers awards the winning author $1,000, and the Journal will publish the winning article.
Lauren Cole was elected a lifetime Fellow of Britain’s prestigious Royal Historical Society. In Germany she won a Leibniz-Institut für Europaisches Geschichte Fellowship for Doctoral Students, which she declined in favor of Northwestern’s Presidential Fellowship. She organized a panel and workshop at the International Medieval Congress, and presented papers at the International Medieval Congress, the DAAD Jubiläumstreffen, and the Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies.
Elsa De La Rosa presented the paper “Transnational Roots of Anti-Chinese Sentiment in the Late Porfiriato (1880-1910)” in the Borderlands and Latino/a Studies Seminar at the Newberry Library. Her chronological follow-up paper "Transnational Dimensions of Anti-Chinese Sentiment and Measures in Mexico (1900–1934)” will form part of the panel Race and Ethnicity in the Remaking of the Modern Nation at the 2026 Congress of the Latin American Studies Association.
Taryn M. Dixon was named a Graduate Fellow in the Brady Scholars Program for Ethics and Civic Life, beginning in September of this year and continuing through AY2028-29. She also received a TGS Travel Grant to present her first-year paper at a conference at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France, this May.
Alison Foster presented "Boyhood, Adolescence, and the Development of Masculinity in American Slavery" on a panel titled "Imperial Power Through Children's Eyes" for the Childhood and Empire symposium at the University of Chicago.
Maria Gomez received the Roberta Buffett Institute of Global Affairs: International Pre-Dissertation Research Award to travel this summer to Mexico to conduct field research on her investigation: “From Campesinos to Gomeros: A History of State Violence and Drug Trafficking.” This research will focus on understanding the historical development of networks of power and complicity in the State of Guerrero and why, within a political system, some became expendable. This grant will allow her to make significant contributions around memory, territorial struggles, state violence, and the importance of intertwining these processes with drug production in Latin America.
Anna Guenter received a Summer Graduate Student Research Fellowship at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to conduct research there from June to August. She also had her article "The 1931 Biatorbágh Train Attack and the Political Polarization of Austrian Newspapers in the Interwar Period” accepted for publication in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Austrian Studies.
David Li received two grants this year: the Esherick-Ye Foundation Fellowship and the International Pre-dissertation Research Award from the Buffett Institute.
Thomas Parsa had an article published titled, "Uninvited Guests and Biting Dogs: Munīr Lāhorī and the Definition of an Indo-Persian Literary Tradition," in Iranian Studies 58, no. 4 Special Issue: Iran in Materiality (October 2025).
Hannah Reynolds was awarded the William R. Coe Fellowship (a three-month fellowship) from the Beinecke Library. She is a recipient of a Cromwell Fellowship from the American Society of Legal History, a Mellon Fellowship from the U.S. Law and Race Initiative at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a week-long Jacob M. Price Fellowship at the Clements Library. She received the Gloria Ricci Lothrop Fellowship from the Huntington Library, the Littleton-Griswold Research Grant in US Legal History from the American Historical Association, and the Cokie Roberts Fellowship for Women's History from the National Archives Foundation to support her dissertation research. She is also the beneficiary of conference grants from the American Society for Legal History and the Coalition for Western Women's History to fund her participation in the ASLH and the Western History Association conferences, respectively.
Cole Roecker presented “Unstable Ground: A Watery History of Horicon Marsh and the Trouble with 'Restoring' Land” (the 2025 winner of our own George Romani Prize for the best First Year paper) at the Environmental Humanities Congress.
Aoi Saito, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Reischauer Institute at Harvard University, has accepted an offer for a three-year visiting position in Japanese language and studies at Williams College.
Natasha Shahid was selected to present a paper at the Symposium of Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Saint Louis University in June 2026 and to participate in the BTAA Summer Institute in Central Asian Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington in July 2026.
Sara Simon presented the paper “The Labor of Vital Statistics: John Shaw Billings, the 1890 U.S. Census, and the Rise of the Punched Card”, based on her 570 research, at the Society for the History of Technology's annual conference. She published a book review of Brian Michael Murphy's We the Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World with H-Sci-Med-Tech on H-Net Reviews, and began serving as a peer reviewer for the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. In non-professional news, Sara Simon is overjoyed to announce the birth of her son, Samuel. Sam arrived a month and a half early and owes many smiles and giggles to the fabulous department members who covered for his mom in her absence. After spending three weeks in the NICU, Sam is now thriving at home, where his book collection rivals Sara's in size.