Announcing the 2025-2026 MHS Research Fellows

by Cassandra Cloutier, Assistant Director of Research

The Research Department is pleased to announce the 2025-2026 cohort of research fellows. Each year, the Massachusetts Historical Society provides financial support for scholars utilizing our unique collections on American history to produce original scholarship.  

The MHS typically offers various short-term fellowships as well as NEH-funded long-term fellowships each award season. Short-term fellowships support four to eight weeks of research while long-term fellowships require a minimum of four months in residence at the MHS. Unfortunately, after the selection of this year’s long-term fellows, the NEH funding for this fellowship program was terminated. Although four scholars were selected for long-term fellowships, the awards will not be distributed.

This year’s awarded projects span the sixteenth century to the present and investigate topics such as the history of commodities, borderlands, and various religious traditions. Others reexamine women in the transcendentalist movement, colonial-era witch trials, and, of course, the American Revolution. Congratulations to the fellows selected to receive this year’s awards! We look forward to welcoming these scholars to the MHS and learning more about the following projects in the coming year.

MHS-NEH Long Term Fellows

  1. Nicole Breault, Assistant Professor, University of Texas at El Paso, “Set the Watch: Policing and Governance in Early America”

  2. Alexander Clayton, Assistant Professor, University of Vermont, “The Living Animal: Menageries and the Nature of Empire”

  3. Leland Jasperse, Humanities Teaching Fellow, The University of Chicago, “Theories and Practices of Intimate Friendship in the 19th-Century New England Literary Scene”

  4. Jonathan Schroeder, Lecturer, Rhode Island School of Design, “Harriet and John Jacobs: Their Worlds and the Worlds They Made”

New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC)

NERFC Fellows Visiting the MHS

  1. Andrew Abrams, Ph.D. Candidate, College of William & Mary, “Days and Hours: Labor, Technology, and Temporality in Early America”

  2. Robert Colby, Assistant Professor, University of Mississippi, “William and Sarah Jackson’s Civil War”

  3. Amy Finstein, Associate Professor, College of the Holy Cross, “In the Center Yet on the Side: Elisabeth May Herlihy and the Mechanics of American City Planning, 1910-1950”

  4. Ella Hadacek, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Notre Dame, “Going to Rome: British and American Women’s Conversion to Catholicism, 1840-1930”

  5. Claire Lavarreda, Ph.D. Candidate, Northeastern University, “Cultural Transformation in the Process of Text Production: Indigenous Catholicism in New France and New Spain, 1521-1701”

  6. William Morgan, Ph.D. Candidate, Indiana University Bloomington, “A Long Revolution: Emancipation, Black Politics, and Radical Memory in New England”

  7. Tristan New, Ph.D. Candidate, Boston University, “The People, the Courts, and the Contested Revolution in Massachusetts, 1772-88”

  8. Ariel Silver, Assistant Professor, Southern Virginia University, “The Conversationalists”

  9. Evelyn Sterne, Associate Professor, University of Rhode Island, “Faith in Crisis: Religion in Boston During the Great Depression”

  10. Rachel Walker, Associate Professor, University of Hartford, “Free Radicals: Fringe Thinkers and the Fight for Liberty in Nineteenth-Century America”

  11. Tingfeng Yan, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Chicago, Colonial Society Fellow, “Administration and the Making of the Constitutional Order in Founding-era America”

  12. Yuan Yi, Assistant Professor, Concordia University, “Yellow Cotton: Nankeen, Biodiversity, and Material Culture in the Early Transpacific World”

  13. Carolyn Zola, Postdoctoral Fellow, Library Company of Philadelphia, “Public Women: Urban Provisioners and the Rise of American Capitalism”

Fellows Not Visiting the MHS

  1. Anne Bardaglio, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Maine Orono, “Island Time: Cultural Production of Sense of Place in the Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy, 1850-1920”

  2. Jacqueline Beatty, Associate Professor, York College of Pennsylvania, “Engendering Orientalism in the Empire of Liberty”

  3. Emily Bingham, Visiting Honors Faculty Fellow, Bellarmine University, “Study Abroad: Youth, Power, Learning, Love”

  4. Kathryn Gindlesparger, Associate Professor, Thomas Jefferson University, “Old Money: The Language of Philanthropy and the Foundation of American Higher Education”

  5. Genevieve Kane, Ph.D. Candidate, Boston University, “Climate Resilient: An Environmental History of Boston’s Waterfront and its Architecture since the Nineteenth Century”

  6. Brian Knoth, Associate Professor, Rhode Island College, “A Creative Research-based Exploration of the Original Songs and Poetry Written on New England Whaling Ships”

  7. Cecilia Márquez, Assistant Professor, Duke University, “Latinos on the Fringe: Latinos and the Right since World War II”

  8. Erica McAvoy, Graduate Student, University of New Hampshire, “’For the Use of Said Parish:’ Black New Englanders, the Congregational Church, and the Intersection of Opportunity and Oppression in the 18th Century”

  9. Arrannè Rispoli, Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Los Angeles, “Murder and the Mundane: Capital Punishment and the Architecture of Black Criminality in Early New England”

  10. Christine Sears, Associate Professor, University of Alabama in Huntsville, “Mariners and Labor in the Early American Republic”

  11. MaryKate Smolenski, Ph.D. Candidate, Boston University, “The Loyalist Legacy: Memory and Material Culture of New England Loyalists, 1776 – 1976”

  12. Gretchen Starr-LeBeau, Professor, Principia College, “Between the Law of Divine Love and the Law of the State: The Global Growth of Christian Science to 1950”

  13. Alicia Svenson, Ph.D. Candidate, Northeastern University, “Turning Craft into Technology: Standardization within the U.S. Stone and Brick Industries, 1880-1940”

  14. Peter Twohig, Professor, Saint Mary’s University, “Women’s Activism and the ‘Third Wave’ of Occupational Health, 1970-1985”

  15. Claire Urbanski, Independent Scholar, “Settler State Spiritual Violence and the Human Sciences: from the Anatomy Acts to the Army Medical Museum”

  16. Karen Weingarten, Professor, Queens College, CUNY, “The Birth of the Radical Abortion Rights Movement: A Collective Biography of an Activist, a Journalist, a Doctor, and a Lawyer”

Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship on the Civil War, Its Origins, and Consequences

  1. Robert Colby, Assistant Professor, University of Mississippi, “William and Sarah Jackson’s Civil War”

Short-Term Fellowships

  1. Kathryn Angelica, Visiting Assistant Professor, Purdue University Fort Wayne, “Community Strongholds: Creating, Maintaining, and Defending African American Institutions for the Vulnerable in the United States” (African American Studies Fellowship)

  2. Vincent Calvagno, Undergraduate Student, Adelphi University Honors College, “Aquatic Appropriation: Water and Property in Colonial New England” (W. B. H. Dowse Fellowship)

  3. Kate Culkin, Professor, CUNY–Bronx Community College and Graduate Center, “’One Cannot Do Everything for One’s Self:’ Pragmatic Collaboration and Artistry in the Career of Sarah Freeman Clarke” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

  4. Julie Dobrow, Lecturer, Tufts University, “Mrs. Emerson’s House” (Ruth R. Miller Fellowship)

  5. Xiaoyu Gao, Ph.D. Candidate, The University of Chicago, “Empire of Copper: British and American Global Trade, Chilean Copper, and the Transformation of the Chinese Monetary System (1800-1862)” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

  6. Simon Gilhooley, Associate Professor, Bard College, “The Declaration of Independence as Constitutional Authority in the Long Nineteenth Century” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

  7. Sara Gregg, Associate Professor, Indiana University-Bloomington, “Parallel Lives:  The Making of a Marriage” (Louis Leonard Tucker Alumni Fellowship)

  8. Sarah Gronningsater, Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania, “Rejecting the 1778 Massachusetts Constitution: Local Democracy, Race, and the Possible in the Revolutionary Era” (Benjamin F. Stevens Fellowship)

  9. Morgan Hardy, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, “Changes in the Sea: How Nature Shaped Sustainability in the Early American Cod Fisheries” (Mary B. Wright Environmental History Fellowship)

  10. Matthew Karp, Associate Professor, Princeton University, “Millions of Abolitionists: The Republican Party and the Political War against Slavery” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

  11. Chloe Kauffman, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Maryland, College Park, “’If women are curious, women like also to speak’: Unmarried Women, Sexual Knowledge, and Female Mentorship in the Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Atlantic” (Alyson R. Miller Fellowship)

  12. Bianca Laliberté, Ph.D. Candidate, Université du Québec à Montréal, “The American ‘Indian’ in the Eye of the American Revolution: A Critical Inquiry into the American Fabrication of Art History” (Andrew Oliver Fellowship)

  13. Jonathan Lande, Assistant Professor, Purdue University, “The Civil War Battles of Frederick Douglass and His Soldier Sons” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

  14. Lucia McMahon, Professor, William Paterson University, “’All learning and culture is centered in them’:  An Early History of Women and Yoga in America” (C. Conrad & Elizabeth H. Wright Fellowship)

  15. M. Michelle Morris, Associate Professor, University of Missouri – Columbia, “The Devil Comes to Hartford: The Hartford Witchcraft Trials of the 1660s” (W. B. H. Dowse Fellowship)

  16. John Morton, Visiting Assistant Professor, Saint Joseph’s University, “Networks of Faith: Missionaries, Priests, and the Building of the US-Canadian Border” (C. Conrad & Elizabeth Wright Fellowship – Declined)

  17. John Nelson, Assistant Professor, Texas Tech University, “A Renegades’ History of the Revolutionary Borderlands: Contesting Race and Nation in the Early American West” (Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship)

  18. Robert O’Sullivan, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Notre Dame, “Revolutionary Nationalism, European Imperialism and Anti-Slavery: Irish-American Global Consciousness in the Era of Emancipation, 1840-1865” (Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellowship)

  19. Steven Pitt, Associate Professor, St. Bonaventure University, “Bloodwood: The Rise of American Capitalism” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars in Massachusetts)

  20. Arrannè Rispoli, Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Los Angeles, “Murder and the Mundane: Capital Punishment and the Architecture of Black Criminality in Early New England” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

  21. Sophie Rizzieri, Graduate Student, The University of Notre Dame, “Americans Abroad: Bridging Worlds of Law in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic” (Kenneth & Carol Hills Fellowship)

  22. Sarah Rodriguez, Assistant Professor, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, “Constitutional Revolutions: The US and Mexico in the Age of Civil Wars, 1855-1870” (Elizabeth Woodman Wright Fellowship)

  23. Andrew Schocket, Professor, Bowling Green State University, “Several Degrees of Persons: How the First Census Made the Nation” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

  24. Michael Schoeppner, Associate Professor, University of Maine-Farmington, “Living Illegally: Free Black Migrants, Border Controls, and Belonging in the Early United States” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

  25. Madelaine Setiawan, Graduate Student, Texas A&M University, “Our Friends, the Enemies: How Southern Unionist Women were Remembered or Forgotten” (Military Historical Society of Massachusetts Fellowship)

  26. Amy Sopcak-Joseph, Associate Professor, Wilkes University, “’From the Fair, To the Brave’: Gender and the Bunker Hill Monument” (Louis Leonard Tucker Alumni Fellowship)

  27. Ella Starkman-Hynes, Graduate Student, Yale University, “A Different Kind of Mirror: Examining the Role of Alternate History in Civil War Memory” (Louis Leonard Tucker Alumni Fellowship)

  28. R.B. Tiven, Ph.D. Candidate, CUNY Graduate Center, “One Person, One Vote: the Politics of the Nineteenth Amendment” (Abigail Bowen Wright Fellowship)

  29. Rachel Wiedman, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, “Stern and Aggressive, as Befitted the Times: Masculinity, Statesmanship, and the Transformation of Northern Political Culture in the Civil War Era” (Marc Friedlaender Fellowship)

  30. Claire Wolnisty, Associate Professor, Austin College, “‘Commanded by a Woman’: Women and the Nineteenth-Century International Trade in Enslaved People” (Louis Leonard Tucker Alumni Fellowship)

  31. Joseph Wrobleski, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Maine, “Wabanaki Legalities:  Indigenous Sovereignty, Property, and Jurisprudence on the Maritime Peninsula, 1700-Present” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars in Massachusetts)
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