M.A. in World History Students
M.A. in Public History Students
Cohort: 2012
Research Interests: Soviet & modern Russian history; Gender in post-Soviet space
Cohort: 2015
Research Interests: The British Empire; Myanmar; Global Islam in South/Southeast Asia; Global Great Depression; Race, Space, & The Origins of Social Stratification
Bio: Matthew Bowser is a PhD Candidate in World History at Northeastern University. He previously graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a Bachelor of Philosophy in History and Classics in 2013. His research focuses on the British Empire in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean world, looking specifically at the intersections of capitalism, nationalism, Islamophobia, and the Indian diaspora in Burma. He is a 2019-2020 Fellow of the Northeastern University Humanities Center, and has received research grants from the Northeastern Provost’s Office, Department of History, and Asian Studies Program. His article, “Partners in Empire? Co-Colonialism and the Rise of Anti-Indian Nationalism in Burma, 1930-1938” is currently under review by the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. His dissertation focuses on Burmese nationalism and Burma’s diasporic Indian communities in order to discern the origins of anti-Indian and Islamophobic ideas in the interwar period. He argues that Islamophobia first emerged in colonial Burma in the late 1930s as the result of Burmese nationalists using Muslims as a scapegoat for political and economic issues caused by British and Indian capitalists. By conflating the categories of Indian, colonizer, and Muslim, these nationalists racialized Muslims as “Indian invaders,” so that Indian-Muslims, Indian-Hindus, and even Burmese-Muslims, such as the Rohingya, all fell under this category. This research does not only break down racial tropes. It also provides a case study for asking what kinds of subversion challenge authority, and what kinds uphold it. Burmese anti-immigrant nationalism in the 1930s served only to “divide and rule;” racial hatred distracted from the structural causes of impoverishment and disenfranchisement, unrestricted capitalism and its protection by colonial rule.
Cohort: 2016
Research Interests: British Empire, memory and material culture, genocide
Bio: My dissertation focuses on how people in the 19th and 20th century British metropole portrayed the empire to the general public. Specifically, I am looking at narratives of British humanitarianism in museums and exhibitions, while examining how the people organizing them dealt with the reality of the violence inherent in colonialism. I am also interested in how these narratives reverberate in present attitudes about, and nostalgia for, the empire. I have been awarded conference travel grants from the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, as well as the NU Department of History, and a research grant from the Gillis Family Fund.
Cohort: 2018
Research Interests: Cold War Latin America; 20th Century Diplomatic History; Digital Humanities
Bio: Cassandra earned her B.A. in History from Keene State College in 2016. During her undergraduate career, she focused on US History and Twentieth Century Studies. In 2018, Cassandra entered Northeastern University’s doctoral program in History. Cassandra’s research interests include Latin America in the Cold War and US foreign policy. She is also pursuing a certificate in Digital Humanities.
Cohort: 2014
Research Interests: French Feminism and Empire; Gender and Sexuality in Modern Europe; 20th century political and social movements
Bio: Jack Gronau is a P.h.D Candidate at Northeastern University. His dissertation, “French Women but not Citizens: Colonial Emigration, Imperial Prostitution, and the Colonial Press of French Feminists, 1897-1962,” explores how French feminists participated in the imperial project, both in the colonies and metropole, and how the empire influenced French feminism. It is framed as an analysis of a series of episodes within 20th century French feminist-imperial history, analyzing female colonial emigration, the feminist press in Colonial Maghreb, and anti-prostitution campaigns, to highlight how French feminists incorporated the empire or “imperial issues” into their movement and their discourse for civil and political rights. Jack has been the recipient of multiple research grants which have brought him to the Centre des Archives du Féminisme at the Universitaire d’Angers, the Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer in Aix-en-Provence, and multiple archival sites in Paris, to conduct his dissertation research. Jack has taught courses in “World History since 1945” and "Modern Europe since 1789," and had multiple assistantships for Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
Cohort: 2010
Research Interests: United States in the World; Transnational construction of race; Schools as sites of cultural production about race, identity, and nationalism
Cohort: 2015
Research Interests: The British Empire; 19th century; Race and space; Transport and communication technology; Comparative imperialism; Book history
Cohort: 2017
Research Interests: Constitutionalism, Knowledge and Reform in the Muslim World, Islamic Political Thought, Ottoman Empire & Modern Middle East
Bio:: I have done interdisciplinary studies that span International Relations, Islamic Studies, and History. For my dissertation I am interested in writing a global intellectual history on Ottoman Constitutionalism analyzing the networks of scholars, thinkers, and activists across the world in the late 19th and early 20th century. I have been awarded with CSSH Scholar Fellowship to do intensive Arabic language training at Qasid Institute.
Cohort: 2017
Research Interests:Americas; Great Britain & Ireland; Public History; Visual & Material Culture; Thanatourism
Cohort: 2010
Research Interests: France in the World; Africa; Gender and Empire
Cohort: 2017
Research Interests: North American and Atlantic world history; colonialism in world history; history of science; history of public health; spatial history; digital history
Bio: I am a doctoral candidate in the world history program with a B.A. in history and biology from Butler University. I am interested in how early colonial perceptions of the body influenced the construction of urban landscapes and how urban space shaped the understand of health in return. Most of my work centers around the Anglo- and French- Atlantic world during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Some of the questions that drive my work are who had a right to be healthy in colonial urban places and what constitutes “urban” in a period before cities were constructed? I also consider myself a digital historian and have completed the graduate certificate in digital humanities offered at Northeastern. I am most interested in how digital skills are incorporated into classroom teaching and how to visualize and represent early colonial spaces using digital tools. Most of my DH experience comes from the numerous projects I have completed for the Digital Scholarship Group and the NULab for Texts, Maps and Networks. A complete list of the digital projects I have been a part of, and a copy of my curriculum vitae, can be found on my personal website.
Cohort: 2019
Research Interest: Post colonialism, Global Islam, British and French Empire, Digital Humanities
Bio:
Cohort: 2015
Research Interests: European Imperialism's Urban and Spatial History; African History
Bio: James Parker is a PhD Candidate in World History at Northeastern University, having previously completed his MA at the University of Sheffield in 2013. His research broadly focuses on the British Empire in East Africa, the history of aid and development, and environmental history, linking these through a study of rural water development programs in eastern and northern Kenya in the late-colonial period. He has also acted as a research assistant for the transnational Oceanic Exchanges digital humanities project, and currently serves as the graduate representative of the World History Association. James’ dissertation, The Fluidity of Late-Colonialism: Irrigation, Development, and Control in Kenya, 1940-1963, focuses on the history of water and irrigation in eastern and northern Kenya during the late-colonial period. During this era, the colonial state expended vast amounts of time and resources to try and increase production in rural regions of Kenya, necessitating the expansion of irrigated landscapes. He argues however that these projects served to expand state power in these liminal areas and served the needs of colonial control rather than development for rural communities. Further, the alterations to the landscape that these projects caused, both intentionally and unintentionally, created diverse ecological issues which contributed to their failure. James’ research thus deconstructs revisionist notions of the British Empire as a benevolent entity through a microstudy of coercive water development and its multiple consequences.
Cohort: 2018
Research Interests: Europe and Empire, US and the World, US/European military history
Bio: I graduated from Wichita State University in Wichita, KS, with a Bachelor’s of Arts in History, followed by a Master’s of Arts in 2016. Currently, I am considering expanding upon a previous work on US/French race relations and perspectives during the First World War and developing it into a possible dissertation topic. Additionally, I have been working on incorporating digital tools and methods into my research by using R programming code to analyze the US involvement in Thailand during the Vietnam War through the National Archives’ Southeast Asian Database. Beginning in the summer of 2019, I will serve as a research assistant for Dr. Laura Frader and Dr. Heather Streets-Salter.
Cohort: 2016
Research Interests: Industrial and Labor History; American Social and Cultural History; Gender History; Migration & Migrant Communities; Urban History; Occupational Health
Bio: Simon Purdue is a PhD Candidate studying issues surrounding racism, gender and violence, specifically looking at the gender politics of global white supremacist movements between 1969 and 1999. Simon received his BA (international) in history from University College Dublin in 2015. He then received a Welcome Trust medical humanities scholarship to continue his work at the MA level. He received his MA in the Social and Cultural History of Medicine, also from UCD, in 2016. His master’s thesis explored gender and occupational health in industrial Belfast between 1870 and 1914, and will be published in Irish Historical Studies (Cambridge University Press) in Fall 2019. Simon has been a teaching assistant at Northeastern for four semesters, where he has lectured on topics such as the global far right and the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, and also served as editorial assistant at Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society in the 2017-18 academic year. Simon is a member of the editorial team at H-Nationalism, where he is primarily responsible for editing and moderating the ‘Question of the Month’ series run by the network.
Cohort: 2015
Research Interests United States in the World, US Labor, International Sports, Urban, Social Movements
Bio: I am originally from Philadelphia, and avid Philly sports fan. I also enjoy walking my dog, visiting ballparks, Star Trek, dive bars, and collective bargaining rights of all workers. My dissertation is entitled "Strikes and Strikeouts: Building Sports Culture From Below by Left-wing Radicals in the United States; A Global Perspective, 1918-1950." My dissertation will expose the hidden history of how left-wing activists in the United States engaged with sports as a participatory activity for building organizational strength, morale, and outreach/influence over potential members and allies. I argue that sports programs were an essential part of successful leftwing socialist and labor organizing during the interwar period in the United States. I compare those programs to European-center Worker Sport federations and make international connections between the two traditions. I look specifically at Communist Party and Socialist Party sports programs, and the growth of left-led unions in the labor sports movement, such as the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, the United Autoworkers, the United Electrical Workers, and other unions, as well as New York City labor athletics federations led by leftists that agitated for anti-racist, anti-fascist working class counterculture.
Cohort: 2016
Research Interests: Modern France & the French Colonial Empire; Colonial North Africa; Pacific Worlds; Comparative Empire; Settler Colonialism; the Global 1930s; World War II; Global Fascism; World History
Bio: Luke Sebastian Scalone is a historian of modern France and its colonial empire. He received his A.A. from Joliet Junior College (2014), B.A. from Butler University (2016) and M.A. from Northeastern University (2018). In his dissertation entitled "France's Shattered Empire: Fascism and Republicanism in Tunisia and New Caledonia, 1931-1944", he examines the schism within the colonial empire between Vichy and Free France by analyzing its antecedents through interwar settler relations, anti-colonial movements, radical ideology, and larger imperial networks in colonial Tunisia and New Caledonia; as well as the tension between republican values and their extreme-right challenge during the Second World War. He has been a teaching assistant in courses on modern European history, East Asian history, and contemporary world history. Recently, he received the World History Association/Phi Alpha Theta Graduate Student Paper Prize, a research grant from the American Institute for Maghrib Studies to conduct research in Tunisia, and departmental research grants to conduct research in France and New Caledonia.
Cohort: 2014
Research Interests:Transnational Social Movements; First World War; Italy & the 20th Century World
Cohort: 2019
Research Interest: Social movements in the United States; United States and the world; activist tactics and strategy; philosophy of history.
Bio: Adam graduated from Wake Forest University in 2019 with BAs in history and communication. He was on the debate team and a member of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society. Adam is passionate about climate change and the Boston Celtics. His family lives in Kingston, MA.
Cohort: 2016
Research Interests: Social Movements in Cold War Germany and International Diplomacy
Bio: I am a Ph.D. candidate whose dissertation explores international reactions to social movements and domestic unrest in Cold War West Germany. My dissertation asks how dissenting voices from the streets affected high policy decision-making by examining reports, dossiers and gossip produced about the former by international actors. My research will take me to archives in the U.K, France, Germany and the USA, as I look to add a historiographical approach to a field largely defined by works of social movements studies and international relations. In particular I seek to understand how anti-establishment unrest affects concrete policy decisions. My dissertation also seeks to ask as to the ways in which the government in Bonn used domestic unrest to gain concessions from the occupying nations. By highlighting their own instability, successive West German governments sought to win concessions from their occupiers. I wish to examine this tactic to help us to understand how weaker nations can accomplish policy goals in the face of crises. The twin goals of asking how social movements succeed and how weaker nations can flourish will help add nuance to our understanding of anti-establishment unrest and its role in Cold War diplomacy.
Cohort: 2019
Research Interest: Migration history, Cold War, 19th Century American political history, Newspapers and material culture
Bio: Alex Bice attended Carleton College, where he graduated with a BA in History and received the Ellen Rogers Steif Memorial Award. During his senior year, he interned with the Student Community Outreach Program Experience (SCOPE) where he taught 8th graders the tools of historical writing and research while helping the students prepare a research project and presentation based on local community history. This experience inspired him to pursue historical study and the presentation of history to the public as his career path; he is very excited for all the opportunities that Northeastern and Boston have to offer.
Fieldwork: National Atomic Testing Museum, Student Community Outreach Program Experience.
Cohort: 2018
Research Interest: Oral history, Modern America, World War II, Museums and public outreach, Public Policy, Digital humanities
Fieldwork: Oneida County History Center, Adirondack Experience: The Museum on Blue Mountain Lake, Onondaga Historical Association, Chilean Arpillera Project, Roger Williams Project
Cohort: 2019
Research Interest: 19th and mid-20th-century British and American history, women in wartime
Bio: Anjelica Oswald graduated from Ohio University in 2015 as a Templeton Scholar with a BS in Journalism and minors in Spanish and political science. She interned for the Hollywood Reporter in Los Angeles and later moved to New York City where she worked for Business Insider and INSIDER for three years as a video producer and pop culture reporter. She decided to change careers after a trip to Scotland made her realize her passion for historical research and is furthering her education by pursuing an MA in public history at Northeastern.
Fieldwork:
Cohort: 2018
Research Interest: Post-World War II public memory; Political cartoon rhetoric
Fieldwork: National Archives; National Museum of American History
Cohort: 2018
Research Interest: Cold War, Intelligence and Espionage, Pop Culture and Film
Fieldwork: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, The Mark Twain House and Museum
Cohort: 2019
Research Interest: African American history, Oral history and storytelling, Museums and community engagement
Bio: Danielle Rose previously attended the University of Florida, where she interned at the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program. She graduated in 2016 with a BA in history and minor in communication studies, and began working as a museum educator at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami, Florida. She is interested in exploring how museums utilize technology and community engagement programs to provide more inclusive and accessible spaces.
Fieldwork: Vizcaya Museum and Gardens
Cohort: 2018
Research Interest: Digital Humanities, Early American history, women's history
Bio: Meg Szydlik anticipates graduating with her MA in public history from Northeastern in 2020. She received her BA in history from Ramapo College of New Jersey in 2017. She attended UNH's inaugural Public Humanities Summer Institute in 2019. Her experience in the public history field includes doing both research and public work for projects such as the Jane Addams Papers Project, the National Women's History Museum, and the Women Writers Project. She recently curated a digital exhibit on women in politics through the lens of public broadcasting for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a partnership between WGBH's Media Library Archives in Boston and the Library of Congress in DC. She will also receive a certificate in digital humanities from Northeastern, for which she is working on a digital archive that collects the responses of the disabled community to representations of disability on screen media.
Fieldwork: Women Writer's Project, American Archive of Public Broadcasting, Old North Church
Cohort: 2018
Research Interest: Digital Humanities and Storytelling; Modern American social and cultural history; History of North American Indigenous peoples
Fieldwork: Naval History and Heritage Command; Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
Cohort: 2018
Research Interest: Womxn's history; museums & public engagement; African-American history; environmental history; public memory & history as cultural production; 20th century political and social movements; transitional justice; global histories of colonialism
Bio:
Fieldwork: National Museum of African American History & Culture; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Jewish Heritage