Allison Baker

Advisor: Matthew Vitz

Tyler Bouwens

Advisor: Edward Watts

Justin Brennan

Jordan Buchanan

MA (Hons) History and Politics, University of Dundee - 2019
MPhil in World History, University of Cambridge – 2020

Research Themes: Latin America, Mexico, Housing, Urbanism, Neoliberalism, Coffee and Commodities, Global History, Social History, Oral History, Economic History.

Tentative Dissertation Title: A Decent Home: Social Housing in Mexico during The Neoliberal Transition, 1972-1992

In my doctoral research, I investigate the history of social housing in Mexico between 1972- 1992. I approach the role and motivations of state intervention in the housing market in response to demographic and urban growth in the late twentieth century. Architects and urban planners were important actors in the production of social housing space and urban development in Mexico that I analyze to appreciate the influence of modernist architectural discourse and values on these architects and their projects in Mexico. The peak production of social housing in Mexico coincided with economic crisis and the neoliberal transition. I consider how urban development and social housing were impacted by these political economic circumstances during the 1980s. Moreover, understanding the lived experience of social housing is an important element of my research. I conduct oral history with residents of social housing to consider why they took up social housing, how they built community, how they adapted to the challenges of working-class neighborhoods, and what aspirations and desires motivated them.

Additionally, I work on the history of specialty café culture in Latin American cities between 1998-2020. This project traces the rise of the specialty café industry in coffee-producing countries to understand how it emerged, who were the main entrepreneurs in the industry and why did these people opt for a specialty coffee business project. I have conducted oral history research for this project in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

Advisor: Matthew Vitz

Tien-Yuan Chen

Niall Chithelen

Advisors: Karl Gerth and Micah Muscolino

Jerry Christodoulatos

Advisor: Thomas Gallant

Thomas Connell

Advisors:  Hasan Kayali and Michael Provence

Amanda DeMarco

Advisors: Karl Gerth & Micah Muscolino

Alexander Dinh

Advisor: Claire Edington

Ian Dubrowsky

BA University of Pennsylvania

MA New School for Social Research

Research Themes: Modern China, global 20th and 21st centuries, grassroots radicalism, alternative cultures, intellectual history, social movements, labor history, gender, transnationalism.

Tentative Dissertation Project Title: The Roads Not Taken: Grassroots Radicalism and Alternative Cultures in China’s 20th Century

My dissertation investigates how grassroots communities in 20th century China adapted radical ideologies to construct alternative cultures of resistance. It presents how Marxist peasants, feminist socialists, worker poets, rebel “ultra-left” Maoists, and young female migrant factory workers reconfigured radical ideas to articulate their distinct visions, shaped by their specific cultural contexts, social worlds, and lived experiences.

The dissertation contends that grassroots practices of localizing, experimenting with, and contesting revolutionary ideals frequently went beyond the limits of official ideology and state-led mobilization, while also intersecting with broader struggles for gender equity, workers’empowerment, and social justice. By exploring these histories, the dissertation decenters and pluralizes our understanding of the Chinese revolutionary experience, uncovering its internal tensions, unintended consequences, and unrealized potentials.

Drawing on a wide range of sources the project traces the transnational circulations, cultural innovations, and political contestations that animated China’s grassroots radicalism across the 20th century. In doing so, it opens up new possibilities for rethinking the diverse meanings, untold stories, and unfinished struggles for a more democratic and egalitarian society.

I am also involved in UCSD’s mentorship program connecting graduate students with undergraduates majoring in humanities fields who are interested in pursuing advanced degrees in a humanities discipline. I welcome connecting with prospective students interested in modern Chinese history, comparative revolutions, and social and cultural history. Feel free to reach out if you would like to discuss the graduate program, application process, or your research interests.

Advisors: Karl Gerth & Micah Muscolino

Bobby Edwards

B.A. in Art Studio, California State University, Sacramento, 2013
B.A. in History, California State University, Sacramento, 2013
M.A. in History, California State University, Sacramento, 2016

My research focuses on the colonial history of American anthropology in the early twentieth century. I examine how the theory of linguistic relativity informed colonial ideology and U.S.-Indian policy. I also analyze the structural relationship between science and empire through the lens of Native American history. 

Dissertation Title: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Critical Anthropology, Colonial Science, and Native Modernity in the American Borderlands

My work engages with the history of anthropology, American Studies, Native American studies, and Science Studies. 

Advisors: Danny Widener and Ross Frank

Matthew Ehrlich

Advisor: Pamela Radcliff

Monique Garcia

Holly Gibbens

B.A. in English and History, Spring Hill College

I’m studying Latin American history, concentrating primarily on Chile during the 1960s and 1970s. My main thematic interests are liberation theology and popular education initiatives, and how they shape democratic social projects during pivotal and often violent-political transitions. I plan on focusing my research on the link between Catholic social justice teaching, literacy campaigns, and the leftist politics in Chile leading up to the coup and dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Christina Gomez

Advisor: Luis Alvarez and Rosie Bermudez

John Gove

B.S. in Political Science, Florida State University
M.A. in History, San Diego State University

I am interested in political activism and social justice in the 20^th-century United States, particularly LGBTQ+ activism and issues of gender in Southern California.

Advisor: Rebecca Plant

Jaeyoung Ha

Before he came to the U.S., Jaeyoung Ha studied modern Korean history with Dr. Park Chan-seung in South Korea. After having a career at a museum and archive, he came to the U.S. for the Ph.D. program in history at UCSD in 2017. Jaeyoung advanced to candidacy Fall 2021.

Jaeyoung’s dissertation project, “‘Blood, Sweat, and Tears’,” investigates upland South Korea’s industrialization and social engineering programs that came into being from the intersection between the postcolonial South Korean nation-building project and the U.S. anti-communist strategy. After the Korean War, attracted by untapped mineral reserves required for South Korea’s nation-building and the U.S. defense industry, the U.S. and South Korean states embarked on massive industrialization and demographic engineering that Jaeyoung comprehensively calls the “mountain enclosure campaign.” Jaeyoung’s dissertation explores how these developmental projects reframed the resource-rich but impoverished upland hinterland as South Korea’s new industrial frontier as well as a part of U.S. westering frontierism. In his project, Jaeyoung also investigates the culture of capitalistic meritocracy exemplified by the state’s effort to foster “nationalized” and “hard-working” reserve labor mobilized in these mountains’ industrial sites. Particularly concentrating on highland mining company towns, Jaeyoung’s project investigates how this meritocratic discourse justified and perpetuated inequality and social stratification in the upland local society of South Korea.

Research Interests: Korean History, Cold War, Trans-Pacific History, History of Capitalism and Labor, Nationalism and Birth of Nationalist Discourse 

Advisor: Todd Henry

Nour Hachem

Advisors: Hasan Kayali and Michael Provence

Shumeng Han

Felicitas Hartung

B.A. in History, University of Würzburg, Germany
State Examination (Erstes Staatsexamen) in History, German, and Ethics/Philosophy, University of Würzburg, Germany

Scholarly Interests: U.S. History, European History (especially German History), History of Emotions, History of Science, Public Diplomacy and Propaganda

Before I came to UC San Diego, I earned a teaching degree (Erstes Staatsexamen) for teaching History, German, and Ethics/Philosophy from the University of Würzburg in Germany. Further, I earned a bachelor’s degree in History and German Linguistics/Literature.

In my dissertation, I focus on aspects related to early Cold War emotional management through information control. I examine the actions of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists (ECAS) – a group of nuclear scientists around Albert Einstein, Linus Pauling, and Leo Szilard who launched a campaign to educate the public about the dangers of atomic energy and spoke out for the formation of a world government under which all nuclear power should be placed. I thereby seek to illuminate the trust/distrust relationship between government entities, the U.S. public, and nuclear scientists which was impacted by a constant fear of nuclear destruction. Driven by a concern about increasing public distrust in both science and governmental leadership, scientists as well as government agencies sought to use public nuclear fears and influence the public perception of the atomic threat by manipulating the information released about the dangers of atomic energy.

Advisors: Rebecca Plant and Nancy Kwak

Cj Headley

Advisor: Frank Biess

Rachel Hennings

Advisor: Deborah Hertz

Delilah Hernandez

Advisor: Rebecca Plant

Jamie Ivey

B.A. in History with a minor in Ancient History from Swarthmore College (with honours) - 2014
M.A. in Global History from Georgetown University and King’s College London – 2016
Ph.D. in progress

I primarily write on Sports History during the Cold War.

My dissertation analyses the global nature of 1980 Moscow Olympic Games Boycott: I am particularly interested in deconstructing the Cold War binary of the event and examining the role that countries from the Global South played and how these countries came to understand the nature of the boycott. Through this approach, I aim to link the 1980 Boycott to contemporaneous anti-colonial and anti-racist boycotts and also to the shifting Cold War climate. 

An early part of my research on British – African issues on sport, diplomacy and 1980 was published by the International Journal of the History of Sport in 2019, entitled “Double Standards: South Africa, British Rugby, and the Moscow Olympics.” It highlighted the struggles of British diplomats to persuade countries to join an Olympic boycott while refusing to honour the sporting embargo of South Africa.

Alongside my dissertation, I am engaged in a number of other fields and am currently writing on a range of sporting topics in Europe, Africa, and America. My M.A. thesis focused on the similarities between the growth of professionalism in British men’s football in the late nineteenth century and moves made around women’s football after WWI. I have also written about German and British football during the fifties to the eighties. And I have a passion for reading and writing about Muhammad Ali.

Advisor: Robert Edelman

Calvin Jordan

Advisors: Jeremy Prestholdt and Claire Edington

Weiyue Kan

Advisor: Weijing Lu

Benjamin Kletzer

B.A. in History, University of California, Santa Barbara
M.A. in History, University of California, San Diego

Dissertation Title: "China’s Dream of the Red Railway Professional Railroaders and The Making of an Industrial Power, 1945-1976"

My research traces the historical and economic development of China National Railways (CNR), examining how the railways facilitated the formation of the modern Chinese industrial state. As the nation’s largest single employer, CNR was the lynchpin of China’s planned economy and a critical strategic asset to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Unlike the rest of China’s economy during the Mao years, I posit that CNR prioritized professional, developmental, and operational concerns over political mandates. I argue that the work and expertise of professional railroaders permitted the railway’s growth along a distinctive developmental path that included trade with enemy nations, internal market competitions, and connections with the outside world at a time when the PRC emphasized economic self-reliance. Intended to be the hallmark of a centrally planned economy, the railways, led by this cohort of professional railroaders, deviated from the dreams of the PRC state, prioritizing expertise over political correctness, professionalism over politics, and conventional technology over socialist science. By examining railway development and operations in the early PRC, my dissertation highlights the daily realities of economic decision-making, investigating how individual actions laid the infrastructural foundation of China’s current economy. My work on CNR intervenes with the existing historical narrative of Chinese economic history, highlighting the activities of individuals whose decisions steered the successful development of CNR through the economic and humanitarian disasters of Maoist China. My work has been supported by the UC Institute on Global and Cooperation, the National Bureau of Asian Research, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Advisors: Karl Gerth and Micah Muscolino

Stephen Kooshian

Scott Lancaster

Advisor:  Pamela Radcliff

Kimiko Nicole LeNeave

Bachelors of Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in History, Latin American Studies, and Music (2014)

Kimiko Nicole LeNeave is a doctoral student of Modern Latin American History at the University of California San Diego pursuing research focused on US-Latin American relations, cultural histories of rebellion and insurgency in Latin American during the Cold War era, and the evolution of protest cultures throughout the Americas. Her dissertation “Rhythms of the Revolution: Sociopolitical Intersections of Music in the Cuban Cold War” illuminates ways music shaped political cultures and events in Cold War Latin America by examining the dialectic exchange between musicians and insurgents as well as transnational relationships between Cuba and other nations mired in political polarization. 

Advisor: Matthew Vitz

Ho Chiu Leung

http://acsweb.ucsd.edu/~c0leung/

Advisor: Karl Gerth

Hyesong Lim

Advisor: Todd Henry

Jose Lumbreras

Advisors: Luis Alvarez and Danny Widener

Olivia Maddox

Advisors: Karl Gerth and Micah Muscolino

Alexis Martinez

Advisor: Benjamin Cowan

Jamie Marvin

Advisor: Edward Watts

Marcus Mayers

Michael McGalliard

Advisor: Mark Hendrickson

Alex McGrath

Liam McKee

Advisor: Mark Hanna

Thomas McLamb

Advisor: Hasan Kayali and Michael Provence

Joy Miller

B.A. in History, California State University, San Marcos, 2015
M.A. in History, California State University, San Marcos, 2018

I am interested in United States history with a subfield of African American history and global history. 

Advisor: Danny Widener

Csaba Olasz

M.A. in American Studies, ELTE University, Budapest
M.A. in Comparative History, Central European University, Budapest
PhD in History, Science Studies. In progress, UC San Diego

I am interested in the interconnections of the social and natural sciences in the 20C. Atomic age, Cold War science and society, institutions, universities, refugee scientists as well as issues of technical experts acting as public intellectuals. I also retain an interest in the historiography of science and religion, broadly construed. 

Advisor: Cathy Gere

Oswin Orellana

B.A. in History, University of California, Irvine, 2015
M.A. in History, California State University, Northridge, 2018

My research revolves around the early modern European period, with a specific focus on the Spanish empire during the 15^th and 16^th centuries. I am interested in the construction of an early modern Spanish identity during this period, whether this identity is self-imposed or is being perpetuated onto themselves by their enemies. So far, my projects have attempted to highlight how the territorial enemies of the Spanish continuously used different mediums to express their interpretation of a Spanish identity while subsequently being in constant interaction with the Spanish’s interpretation of their own identity.

Advisor: Andrew Devereux

Nico Pacetti

Advisor: Andrew Devereux

Catherine Quan Potmesil

B.A. in History, UC Santa Cruz, 2017

I am primarily looking to pursue a trans-pacific approach to examining American imperialism in Southeast Asia. Particularly, I am interested in the aftermath of the Second Indochina Conflict and the ensuing refugee crisis that reached its peak in the 1980s. The refugee camps that were established in locations such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Hong Kong serve as an interesting space in which individuals (camp workers and refugees alike) can articulate their perceived position in relation to the dominant American presence in the region. The liminal nature of the refugee camp also serves as an insight into space-making among refugees away from an established "homeland." 

I am looking to combine a variety of materials, from traditional archival sources, to oral testimonies, to video and digital materials in my work, taking full advantage of digital humanities as a whole. 

Research Interests: Trans-pacific studies, American Empire, Critical Refugee Studies, Immigration, Cold War, American militarism in the Pacific

Advisor: Simeon Man

Miguel Sanchez Morquecho

Advisor: Denise Demetriou

Nathaniel Schwartz

B.A. in History, University of Cincinnati
M.A. in Social Sciences, University of Chicago

I am interested in the sociopolitical and legal dimensions of US immigration history and citizenship. My doctoral research focuses primarily on immigration reform in the 1960s. Specifically, I examine how these efforts succeeded in uniting numerous, diverse, and often disparate interest groups and stakeholders in a campaign to abolish the national origins system—efforts that eventually culminated in the passage of the Hart-Celler Act in 1965.

My previous research includes topics ranging from nativism and xenophobia to evolving notions of American citizenship. For instance, my M.A. thesis, “‘America First’: A Conceptual History, 1870-2019,” explores the sematic genealogy of the phrase, “America First,” spanning the tariff debates of the nineteenth century to its more contemporary usage by far-right figures, including Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump. In addition to my M.A. thesis, I’ve also studied the Americanization movement in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, whose advocates, such as the National Americanization Committee, campaigned to assimilate and “Americanize” German American immigrants through the promotion of English language adoption, as well as, by other more-coercive means following the advent of the First World War.

Research Interests: 20th century US history, immigration law and public policy, patterns of nativism, social movements, legal and political history, nationalism, race and ethnicity.

Advisor: Mark Hendrickson

Guilherme Sena De Assuncao

Advisor: Ben Cowan

Rebecca Shoup

Advisor: Thomas Gallant

Matthew Soleiman

Advisor: Cathy Gere

Abner Sotenos

B.A. in History, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), 2009
M.A. in Social History, Federal University of Rio de Janiero (PPGHIS-IH-UFRJ), 2013
Ph.D. in History, University of California, San Diego, In Progress

Abner Fco Sótenos is a Ph.D. Student in Latin American History at the Department of History of University of California – San Diego. 

He holds a master’s in social history from PPGHIS-Federal University of Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ (2013) Brazil, and a bachelor’s in history at UFRJ (2009).  He was a visiting researcher at Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at Brown University (2016-2018).

Awarded Honorable Mention in the Best Master's Dissertation Award, Ana Lugão Rios do PPGHIS-UFRJ (2013).

He is co-author of the book Written History, Lived History: Social Movements, Memory, and Political Repression During the Military Dictatorship in Brazil, (Rio de Janeiro: Lamparina editora, 2019), in Portuguese.

He is working on a manuscript book entitled Down with the Dictatorship: Democratic Opposition and the Surveillance apparatus in the Baixada Fluminense During the Dictatorial Year, in Portuguese.  Moreover, He is the author of many articles and book chapters and participates as a political commentator in the Brazilian and US press. He is a popular educator and political activist.

He is interested in Racial Formation in Brazil, Latin America, and the Caribbean, Human Right, Transnational Activism in the Diasporic World, Cold War in Latin America, Critical Race Theory, Decolonial Studies, History of Republican Brazil; Military Dictatorship in Brazil, Changes in Political Regimes in Latin America, and grassroot movements in Brazil and the United States.

Advisors: Jessica Graham and Ben Cowan

Dimitrios Stergiopoulos

B.A. in Turkish and Modern Asian Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, 2013
M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies, Leiden University, Netherlands, 2015

My research interests are centered on the transformation of Southeastern Europe and the Middle East from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries due to the incorporation of the region into the capitalist world economy. In my PhD, I am studying the economic and political role of the bankers and merchants in Athens and Istanbul the second half of the 19th century. Specifically, I investigate how these strata navigated the turbulent conjuncture of the 1870s when a multifaceted social, economic, and political crisis affected the region in order to consolidate their position as social and economic elites. For my research, I am mainly using primary sources from non-state historical actors, such as newspapers, pamphlets, ego-documents, biographies, memoirs, family archives and private correspondence in Greek, Ottoman Turkish, English and French.

Dissertation Title: The Bankers of Galata between Athens and Istanbul during the Crisis of 1870s.

Research Interests: Greece, Ottoman Empire, 19th Century, Southeastern Europe, Middle East, Socioeconomic History, World System Analysis, History of Capitalism, Bankers, Constitutionalism, Global Production Networks (GPN).

Website: https://ucsd.academia.edu/DimitriosStergiopoulos

Advisor: Thomas Gallant

Stevie Violette

Advisor: Nancy Caciola

Katherine White

B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology, Neuroscience, University of California Berkeley, 2018

B.A. in English Literature, University of California, Berkeley, 2018

Fields: history of medicine, science studies, Early Modern Spain, Colonial Latin America, history of the body, visual and material culture

Advisor: Andrew Devereux

Yixue Yang

Advisors: Karl Gerth and Micah Muscolino

Yunhui Yang

B.A. in History and Japanese Studies, Furman University, 2019
M.A. in Regional Studies-East Asia (RSEA), Harvard University, 2021

Advisor: Sarah Schneewind

Tianqi "Kiki" Zhao

Advisors: Karl Gerth and Micah Muscolino

Trisha Tschopp