Undergraduate Research Assistantship

The History Department offered several paid research opportunities for Stanford undergraduates to work on a faculty-led research project over the 2023 Winter and Spring quarters. Student research assistants (RA) worked directly with a faculty member on their current research, gaining significant experience in developing a research project, identifying and pursuing research leads, and delivering tangible, meaningful reports. RAs met regularly with the faculty mentor for guidance, feedback, and discussion. The research experience culminated in a research presentation by the student and faculty at the end of the academic year.

Stalin’s Terror, 1930-1939

Faculty Mentor: Norman Naimark

Research Assistant: Andrew Kelmanson

Designing the “Doing Colonial History” course

Faculty Mentor: Jun Uchida

Research Assistants: Malavika Kannan and Ethan Strombeck

Senegal Liberations Project

Faculty Mentor: Richard Roberts

Research Assistant: Becca De Los Santos

Mapping Nueva York

Faculty Mentor: Pedro A. Regalado

Research Assistant: Aliana Arzola

Priests’ Wives and Concubines in the Medieval West

Faculty Mentor: Fiona Griffiths

Research Assistant: Claire Zhao

Arjan Walia | 2023 Joan Nestle Prize Winner

“By and For Ourselves: Gay Men of Color and the Fight Against HIV/AIDS in San Francisco, 1970-1998.”

The Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History (CLGBTH) stated that Walia’s “exceptionally written senior thesis expands on histories of anti-racist organizing to examine the responses of API, Black, Latino, and Native American queer people to HIV/AIDS in San Francisco. Walia reconstructs the contributions of these groups through an impressive array of archival sources bolstered by an extensive list of secondary sources, ... [illuminating] the cooperation and commonalities as well as the myriad ways these groups diverged. This important work challenges us to think more critically about queer of color organizing at the end of the twentieth century.”

Kyra Jasper | 2023 Marshall Scholar

Established in 1953, the Marshall scholarship provides American students with financial support to pursue a graduate degree in the United Kingdom to strengthen the relationship between the United States and the U.K.

As a Marshall Scholar, Kyra Jasper will pursue an MA in international law at the University of London SOAS and MSc in international and Asian history at the London School of Economics. She hopes her graduate studies will support her long-term goal of becoming a scholar in Southeast Asian legal history.

Arman Kassam | 2023 Sterling Prize Winner

The J. E. Wallace Sterling Award for Scholastic Achievement recognizes the top 25 graduating seniors in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences and their most influential secondary school teacher as well as most influential Stanford academic advisor, faculty, or staff member.

“While studying at SOAS and LSE, I will receive structured training in a field I have only really engaged in through working in Indonesia. This knowledge will be an important foundation for me before pursuing a PhD... I am also excited by the questions that these programs are asking about the relationship between colonialism and international law.”

Irmak Ersöz | Stanford History Department Intern

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During the 2022 Summer, I worked at Turkey’s permanent mission to the United Nations on various subjects related to the global politics as well as Turkish foreign affairs. As an intern, I attended various U.N. meetings, conducted research on international law governing humanitarian aid, and got the chance to observe and interact with the many dimensions of multilateral diplomacy.”

2023 Herodotus Undergraduate Journal

Ruosong Gao

Liberty and Authority in Early Colonial Massachusetts

Luke Lamberti

“Male and female He created them”: Martin Luther and the Eunuch, 1519-1537

Ingrid Chen

A Wolf in (Homespun) Sheep’s Clothing: Costuming the Performance of American Equality

Samiya Rana

Sophiatown: City of Night and Starlight

Abigail Schweizer

The Absence and Presence of Divine Light in Byzantine Images of the Virgin

Read Volume XXXIII of Herodotus here

Honors Theses

Mátyás Kisiday

A Living, Controllable Device: The Political Police and Informant Network in Socialist Hungary, 1956-1989

Krystal Navarro

Everyday Soldiers: America’s History of WWII in Video Games

Jessica Femenias

Ecology, Ecstasy, History, and the Haitian Revolution

Lauren Selden

“Strangers and Pilgrims on the Earth”: Early Modern English Pilgrimage, 15361684

Stephanie Castaneda Perez

Assembling the Transnational Economy: Female Labor and the Clothing Trade in Neoliberal Mexico

Julia Milani

Conduct Becoming and Unbecoming of Students: Public Discourses on Dating, Sexuality, Gender, and Consent at Stanford University, 1919-1941

Isabella Saracco

Adultery in the Imagination: Adulteresses, Cuckolds, and Marriage in the Fairy Tales of Sixteenth-Century Venice

Kyra Jasper

Built into the Bedrock: Roadblocks to Accountability for Cases of Gross Human Rights Violations in Indonesia