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Advising

I advise student research on the history of the United States in the world and modern international history. I am especially interested in working with students who adopt fresh approaches and/or look at understudied actors, themes, or connections. My main regions of expertise outside the US are Asia and the Middle East and most students I supervise have some interest in at least one of those regions. 

If you are considering applying for the history PhD program, please note that the academic job market for PhDs in many fields of history has been tight for some years now and that finding long-term academic employment once you graduate could be challenging.

Current doctoral advisees:

  • Daniel Chardell (Topic: The Gulf War, the United States, and the New Middle East Disorder)

Former doctoral advisees:

  • Marino Auffant PhD '22. "Globalizing Oil, Unleashing Capital: An International History of the 1970s Energy Crisis"
  • Ruodi Duan PhD '22. "Ends of Solidarity: China, Tanzania, and Black Internationalism, 1960-1972"
  • Thomas M. Jamison PhD '20. "Pacific Wars: Peripheral Conflict and the Making of the U.S. 'New Navy,' 1865-
    1897"
  • Lydia Walker PhD '18. "States-in-Waiting: Nationalism, Internationalism, Decolonization"
  • Steffen Rimner PhD '14. "The Asian Origins of Global Narcotics Control, c. 1860-1909"
  • Jane Hong PhD '13. "Reorienting America: Race, Geopolitics, and the Repeal of Asian Exclusion, 1940-1952"

Dissertation committee member:

  • Bohao Wu PhD '23. "Uneasy Friends and Convenient Enemies: Sino-Japanese Competition and Coordination in Cold War Asia, 1950–1972"
  • Rachel Steely PhD '22. "Invisible Giant: The Global Rise of Soy in the Twentieth Century"
  • Kristin Oberiano PhD '21. "Territorial Discontent: Chamorros, Filipinos, and the Making of the United States Empire on Guam"
  • Madeleine Dungy PhD '17. "Peace, Power, and Economic Order: International Rivalry and Cooperation in European Trade Politics, 1900-1930"
  • Eva Payne PhD '17. "Purifying the World: Americans and International Sexual Reform, 1865–1933"
  • Zach Fredman PhD '16. “From Allies to Occupiers: Living with the U.S. Military in Wartime China, 1941–1945” (BU, external reader)
  • Asher Orkaby PhD '14. "The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-1968"
  • Kimberly A. Lowe PhD '13. "The Red Cross and the New World Order, 1918-1924" (Yale, external reader)
  • Jeremy Yellen PhD '12. "The Two Pacific Wars: Visions of Order and Independence in Japan, Burma, and the Philippines, 1940-1945"
  • Erik Linstrum PhD '12. "Making Minds Modern: The Politics of Psychology in the British Empire, 1898-1970"
  • Vernie Oliveiro PhD '10. "The United States, multinational corporations and the politics of globalization in the 1970s"
  • Ann Marie Wilson PhD '10. "Taking liberties abroad : American and the international humanitarian advocacy, 1821-1914"
  • Trygve Throntveit PhD '08. "Related states : pragmatism, progressivism, and internationalism in American thought and politics, 1880--1920"

Undergraduate senior theses advisees:

  • Ryan Santos '23, "The Quiet Filipino: The Philippines and the clandestine outsourcing of the American Wars in Indochina, 1954 - 1967"
  • Jonah Lefkoe '19, "Defending the Open Door: The Promise and Perils of Economic Diplomacy in US China Relations, 1898-1922"
  • Sophie Mehta '19, "Front Organizations and Back Doors: The Indian Congress for Cultural Freedom and the CIA in the Cold War"
  • Richard Tong '19, "'SO CALD CIVILIZED NATIONS': Anglophone Internationalism in the Early Twentieth Century"
  • Anatol Klass '17, "China's New Order: The Republic of China and the United Nations System in Asia, 1945-1950" (winner, Hoopes Prize)
  • Benjamin Harland '16, "Universality and Inclusion or Neutrality and Exclusion: Magen David Adom’s Campaign for A New Red Cross Symbol, 1948-2006"
  • Julian Gewirtz ’13, “River Crossings: The Influence of Western Economists on Chinese Reform, 1978-1988” (winner, Hoopes Prize and Philip Washburn Prize). Revised and expanded version published as Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China (Harvard, 2017)
  • David Alan Fuller ’13, “The Balangiga Inflection: Massacre, Media, and the United States’ Understanding of Empire in the Philippines, 1898-1902”
  • Peter Gamble Bacon ’11, “Ambassadors with Bulldozers: American Development in Afghanistan, 1945-1959”
  • Mohindra Rupram ’10, “The American Intervention in Guyana: International, Regional and Domestic Contexts”
  • Robert Gerard King ’10, “Academic Scribblers: Policy Reports and the Making of American Strategy on Latin America, 1948-1980”
  • Amy Michelle Zelcer ‘07, “Henry Morgenthau Jr., the Holocaust, and the Transformation of American Jewish Identity” (winner, Lillian Bell Prize in History)