Ideas that move history forward.
Mentored. Supported. Inspired.
Research Highlight: Alicia Houser
PhD Candidate, Alicia Houser, examines how women across different economic spectrums have constructed their lives and reconstructed the city of Moshi, Tanzania since its independence from British rule in 1961. Houser recently received a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Award, allowing her to spend a year in Tanzania conducting research. 365 days, 17,000 miles traveled, and a wealth of experiences later, Houser captures what research and life in Moshi was like.
Research Highlight: Gabriel Barnes
Gabriel Barnes is a PhD Candidate who hails from Kansas City, Missouri. In the summer of 2025 he was able to take his first research trip to Seville, Spain. For two weeks, Gabriel engaged in exploratory historical research at the General Archive of the Indies, pouring over sixteenth and seventeenth century documents to identify evidence of Black and African-descended sailors who served aboard Spanish naval ships. Naval galleon crew rosters that contained a number of mariners, seemingly of African descent.This article is currently open access and can be read by clicking the link below.
Research Highlight: Kip Perry
From January 15th, 2025 to February 25th 2025, Chancellor’s Doctoral Fellow and Graduate Research Assistant Kip Perry, conducted research in Mexico City, Mexico, exploring early modern Mexican science, philosophy, and ethnohistory through archival sources.
Defended Dissertations
The following dissertations were defended at the completion of the 2025-2026 academic year
Anthony Ruiz: “The Menacing Kaw: Political, Governmental, and Industrial Responses to the 1903 Flood in Metropolitan Kansas City” (2026) | Advised by Kim Warren
- Amy Millet: "Global Connections and Culinary Concoctions of Austrian Cultural Identity, 1870-1938" (2025) | Advised by Andrew Denning
- Haoran Ni: "Consuming American Modernity: The Localization of American Cold Refreshments in Republican Shanghai."(2025) | Advised by Megan Greene
- Titus Firmin: "Off-Limits: The U.S. Army’s Campaign Against Housing Discrimination.” (2025) | Advised by Beth Bailey
Past Dissertations
- Paul Schwennessen: "Conquering Beasts: How Animals Shaped the De Soto and Coro-nado Entradas, 1539-1543" (2023) | Advised by Robert Schwaller
- Adam Rodger "Fighting the Myth of Racial Democracy from Within – Black Political Action in Brazil (mid 1970s - early 2000s) (2023) Advised by Erik Scott
- Eric Funabashi: "Learning to Cook: The Pedagogical and Ideological Nature of Meiji Domestic Cookbooks." (2023) Advised by Eric C. Rath
- Preston Decker: "Writing a Modern Land: Discourses of Environmental Modernity in Twentieth-century Xinjiang," (2023) | Advised by Megan Greene
- João Batista N.Gregoire "Fighting the Myth of Racial Democracy from Within – Black Political Action in Brazil (mid 1970s - early 2000s) (2023) Advised by Elizabeth Kuznesof
- Emily Raymond "The Man-Midwife's Tale: Medical Professionalism and Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century British Midwifery." (2023) Advised by Christopher E. Forth
- Brian Griswold “Westmoreland's and Abrams' Lieutenants: Field Force Commanders of the Vietnam War, 1965-1971.” (2023) Advised by Adrian Lewis
- Paul Landsberg, "Deploy Globally, Train Locally: the U.S. Army and the Global Environment." (2022) | Advised by Sheyda Jahanbani
- Brian Trump, "Sex Crimes and Criminal Sexuality: Legislating and Policing Community Boundaries in Nebraska, 1880-1980" (2022) | Advised by Beth Bailey
- Alyssa Cole, "Movement before the Movement: Black Hospitals in Kansas City, 1890-1940" (2022) | Advised by David Roediger
- Dan Chmill, “Taking the Waters: A Hydrological History of Health and Leisure in Hot Springs National Park, 1832-1932." (2022) | Advised by Sheyda Jahanbani
- Marjorie Galelli, "Two Sides of the Same COIN: A History of the United States and Counterinsurgency During Operation Iraqi Freedom” (2021) | Advised by Beth Bailey
- Ariel LaGue, "'Right to Painless Death:' The Fight for Humane Animal Slaughter in the Cold War United States" (2021) | Advised by Sara Gregg
- Melissa Lunney, "What is a Witch Worth? The Value of Men at the Conclusion of the Salem Witch Trials" (2021) | Advised by Kim Warren
- Andrew Avery, “Land of the Midnight Sun: Antarctica and the British Empire, 1893-Present” (2020) | Advised by Erik Scott
- Mandi Barnard, “A Moral Good: The Gendered Differentiation of Working-Class Girls’ Education in Britain: 1902-1945” (2020) | Advised by Nathan Wood
- Dusty Clark, "Tradition Reinvented: The Reimagination of Kanpō Medicine in Twentieth Century Japan" (2020) | Advised by Megan Greene
- David Hill, “The Perception of Holiness: Spiritual Idealism in Late Medieval & Reformation England, 1350-1539” (2020) | Advised by Eve Levin
- Michael Hill, "The Imperial Drawbridge: Alaska and the U.S. Pacific Empire" (2021) | Advised by Sheyda Jahanbani and Drew Isenberg
- Alana Holland, “The Art of Retribution: Holocaust Memory and Justice in People’s Poland and Soviet Lithuania, 1944-69” (2020) | Advised by Nathan Wood
- Robert Jameson, “Silicon’s Second World: Scarcity, Political Indifference and Innovation in Czechoslovak Computing, 1964-1994” (2020) | Advised by Nathan Wood
- Patrick Klinger, “The Climate of Union: An Environmental History of the Anglo-Scottish Union, circa 1660-1707” (2020) | Advised by Gregory Cushman
- Ashley Neale, “Restructuring the National Security State: President Richard M. Nixon, the War in Vietnam, and Executive Reorganization” (2020) | Advised by David Farber
- Ximena Sevilla Benavides, “On the Edge of the Wild: Representations of the Montaña Region of Peru before the Rubber Boom (1530-1870)” (2020) | Advised by Gregory Cushman
- Hosub Shim, “The Forgotten Army: The Republic of Korea Forces’ Conduct in the Vietnam War, 1965-1973” (2020) | Advised by Adrian Lewis
- Jennifer Warburton, “The Crisis of Protestant Dissenting Identity on the Eve of the American Revolution” (2020) | Advised by Luis Corteguera