Lijun Zhang

I am primarily interested in histories of migration, overseas Chinese, gender and sexuality, material culture, and oral history. My research centers on female migration from Southeastern China to British Malaya and Singapore between the 1920s and 1950s. I am primarily interested in the social relations and support networks that were forged by these female migrants, which were important in making extensive female labor migration possible.

I also have a side interest in food history,…

Alp Cibikli

I am a historian of the Ottoman Empire who is interested in Ottoman East Africa. My research centers on nineteenth-century Ottoman Habesh Eyalet.

Advisor:  Mostafa Minawi

Maria Corredor Acosta

I am a historian specializing in colonial and modern Latin America with a particular focus on maritime cultural landscapes during the Age of Revolution. My research employs interdisciplinary approaches that encompass geography, history, and archaeology to delve into the ways in which various communities shaped their understanding of the spaces they inhabited. I focus on the exploration of maritime communities in the production of knowledge.

Andrew McKanna

I am a historian of late pre-Conquest and Anglo-Norman England, focusing on the history of gender, politics, and law. In particular, I research the construction of the Empress Matilda’s political persona as a female king and how she used her gender to accommodate and alter medieval notions of kingship, queenship, and sovereignty within the broader network of elite Anglo-Norman and Angevin women who bound the political and cultural construction of the North Sea to the Mediterranean. By examining…

Christopher Mingo

I am a historian of modern Europe with a particular interest in Italy and the Mediterranean. My research focuses on the relationship between the fascist state’s prosecution of colonial wars in Africa and the Mediterranean and the development of fascist ideology, and domestic social and economic policies. I am also interested in cultural and intellectual history, transnational histories, and political theory.

Advising Committee with lead listed first: 

Cristina Florea, Nick Mulder, and Enzo…

Grace Naa Korkoi Okine

I am a historian studying economic, social and diasporic relations in postcolonial West Africa, particularly focusing on commodities including palm oil and fish to understand how transnational economic networks, business connections and communities are sustained via trade in and beyond West Africa. I am also interested in using the palm oil industry in postcolonial Ghana as a lens of economic analysis to examine women’s initiatives, entrepreneurship, roles and agency in national development.…

Charlie Wang

Emre Susamci

I am interested in international legal and global intellectual history in the 19th and 20th century with a geographical focus on the Middle East and Europe. Another key interest of mine is the philosophy of history. My advisors are Mostafa Minawi and Nicholas Mulder.

Joseph Akinniyi

Omobolanle J. Akinniyi is a historian of 20th century Africa, thematically interested in Socio-military History and Gender History. Specifically, he is concerned about the survival strategies of African women in war, their contributions to the war efforts, and the varied manifestations of their contributions in social roles. He is also interested in war memory, trauma, and commemoration.

Outside academics, he co-directs Woke Foundation, an NGO committed to intellectually empowering underserved…

Justine Modica

Justine Modica is a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in History at Cornell University. She is writing a book on the history of child care labor in America. This project examines how various constituencies, including nanny professionalization organizations, immigrant rights advocacy groups, federal agencies, municipal task forces, nanny and domestic worker placement agencies, and labor unions defined the value of child care labor and, in doing so, articulated a vision of how American children should be raised and who should raise them.

Chelsea D. McNutt

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would attend graduate school at an Ivy League University. In August 2018, I was given that chance, and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to refine my historical skills. It informed my desire to make an impactful contribution to African American history and fueled my interest in being a conduit to share my historical knowledge acquired within academia with the broader public.