Graduate Students

Martin Adamian

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Contact Information

Email: martin.c.adamian@gmail.com

K Herman Adney

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Advisor(s): James Gelvin, Sarah Stein, Sebouh Aslanian, Christine Philliou, Kent Schull

Kaleb Herman Adney is a PhD candidate whose dissertation research revolves around the political economy of late Ottoman Macedonia and Thrace and the tobacco industry in particular.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: kalebherman@g.ucla.edu

Alice Kiwako Ashiwa

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Japan

Alice Kiwako Ashiwa is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in modern Japanese art, with an interest in the relationship between patronage or institutuional support and avant-garde art, as well the overlaps between “tradition,” “modern,” and “avant-garde”.

Contact Information

Email: aliceashiwa@gmail.com

Chloe Bell-Wilson

Graduate Student

Field of Study: History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

Advisor(s): Soraya de Chadarevian (chair), Katherine Marino, Elizabeth O’Brien, and Juliet Williams

Chloe Bell-Wilson is a PhD candidate who studies the history of synthetic estrogen in the United States.

Contact Information

Email: cbellwilson@g.ucla.edu

Natalie Bernstien

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Jewish

Advisor(s): Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Aomar Boum, David Myers

Natalie is a PhD student in History at UCLA, where she works on modern Jewish history. Natalie is primarily interested in the culture, politics, and languages of North African Jewish communities.

Contact Information

Email: nbernstien@g.ucla.edu

Tania Bride

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Contact Information



Michael Buse

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Michael Buse is a PhD student at UCLA researching California, urban history, and the intersections of settler colonialism and heritage work. He is also interested in Russian colonialism and anti-colonial movements throughout the Pacific.

Contact Information

Email: busem@g.ucla.edu

Jennifer Carcamo

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Advisor(s): Robin Derby, Fernando Perez-Montesinos, & Katherine Marino

I am currently a PhD candidate with a focus on modern Central American history.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: jennifer.carcamo@ucla.edu

Michael Castellano

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Ancient

Contact Information

Email: moc3114@ucla.edu

Jeanette Charles

Doctoral Candidate

Field of Study: Latin America, Caribbean, Afro-Atlantic

Advisor(s): Robin Derby, Robin D.G. Kelley, Winston James, Andrew Apter

Jeanette is a PhD candidate focused on Latin American, Caribbean, and Afro-Atlantic histories. Her dissertation centers the relationship and trajectory of Black radicalism, political economy, and popular religions in contemporary Venezuela from 1958-2013.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: jeanettecharles@g.ucla.edu

Sunny Chen

Graduate Student

Field of Study: History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

Advisor(s): Soraya de Chadarevian

Contact Information

Email: sunnychen@ucla.edu

Zheng Chen (陳政)

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

Contact Information

Email: zchen0505@g.ucla.edu

Aadarsh Chunkath

Graduate Student

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

Advisor(s): Professor Vinay Lal

I am a historian of South Asia and my research interests broadly encompass the modern period particularly the late colonial state and society, and the anticolonial movement.

Contact Information

Email: aadarshchunkath@gmail.com

Deniz Çıtak

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Advisor(s): James Gelvin

Deniz Citak is a first year PhD student focusing on the late Ottoman Empire and Qajar Iran. His other research interests include the politics, diplomacy, and culture of modern Turkey, Iran, the Levant, and the Gulf.

Contact Information

Email: dcitak@ucla.edu

Beatriz Cruz-Lopez

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Contact Information

Email: beatrizcruzl@ucla.edu

Michael Dean

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

My research centers around the labor history of California’s prison system. From prison guards to convict labor to free workers, my work focuses on the various ways in which people’s working lives shaped and were shaped by the trajectory of the various carceral booms that have taken place in California.

Contact Information

Email: mikefzdean@ucla.edu
Office: 2155 Bunche Hall

Kayne Doughty

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Advisor(s): Eric Avila

Kayne is a PhD student in the History Department at UCLA researching 20th century urban California.

Contact Information

Email: kayneadoughty@g.ucla.edu

Thalia Ertman

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

My research is focused on American feminist activism from a transnational perspective in the 1960s and 1970s.

Contact Information

Email: thaliaertman@g.ucla.edu

Benji Fleischacker

Graduate Student

Contact Information

Email: bfleisch@ucla.edu

Desmond Fonseca

Graduate Student

Advisor(s): Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley

My research interests include Pan-Africanism, black Marxisms, and anti-colonialism with an emphasis on the decolonization of Lusophone Africa in the 1970s, into the neocolonial and neoliberal turn of the 1980s.

Contact Information

Email: dfonseca@g.ucla.edu

Madonna Aoun Ghazal

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Advisor(s): James Gelvin

My research explores the relationships between gender, property, and women’s position in the family in late Ottoman Beirut.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: madona_aoun@hotmail.com

Jacob Green

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Science, Medicine, and Technology

Advisor(s): Theodore Porter, Soraya de Chadarevian, Michael Meranze, Amir Alexander and Mary Terrall

Jacob is a historian of science and medicine, and the United States.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: jacobogreen@gmail.com

Carson Greene

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Ancient

Advisor(s): Greg Woolf

Carson is a History PhD student at UCLA, where he studies the Roman empire in Late Antiquity.

Contact Information

Email: carsongreene17@g.ucla.edu

Sara-Marie Greenman-Spear

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Advisor(s): Dr. Katherine Marino and Dr. Fernando Pérez-Montesinos

Contact Information

Email: sgreenmanspear@ucla.edu

Pranav Gulukota

Graduate Student

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

Advisor(s): Vinay Lal

I am a PhD student interested in the social, political, and intellectual history of twentieth century South India, with particular interest in anticolonial movements, the Telangana Rebellion, and the Dravidian movement.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Contact Information

Email: pranavgulukota6@g.ucla.edu

Britton Gustafson

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Africa

Advisor(s): Hollian Wint

Britton is a first-year History PhD student at UCLA, where he studies African medical history. He focuses on East African and disease history.

Contact Information

Email: brittongus@g.ucla.edu

Yiming Ha

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

Advisor(s): Chair: Richard von Glahn, Committee members: R. Bin Wong, Sixiang Wang, David M. Robinson

My project explores the introduction of a new method of military mobilization to China by the Mongol-Yuan, its subsequent adoption by the succeeding Ming dynasty, and the long-term consequences of this adoption.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: ymingha@ucla.edu

Safa Hamzeh

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Current/Former HGSA Member

Contact Information

Email: safahamzeh@ucla.edu

Xiaowen Hao

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

Contact Information

Email: haoxiaowen@g.ucla.edu

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

Advisor(s): Vinay Lal

Contact Information



Genene Hayle

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Africa

Contact Information



Vivian Hernandez

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Advisor(s): Dr. Katherine Marino and Dr. Fernando Pérez-Montesinos

Vivian is a History PhD student at UCLA, where she studies modern Latin American women’s and gender history.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Contact Information

Email: vvhernandez@ucla.edu

Lily Hindy

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Advisor(s): James Gelvin, Aomar Boum, Kevin Y. Kim, Aslı Balı

Lily Hindy is a PhD candidate in History at UCLA whose dissertation research focuses on how the Kurdish nationalist movement in Iraq and in the diaspora utilized the growing bureaucracy of human rights to publicize their plight internationally and gain support for autonomy between the 1970s and 2003.

Contact Information

Email: hindy@g.ucla.edu

Philip Hoffman

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Advisor(s): James Gelvin

Philip Hoffman is a third-year PhD student, researching the framing of land reform in twentieth-century Syria.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Contact Information

Email: phoffman1@g.ucla.edu

Qianqing Huang

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Japan

Contact Information

Email: hqqrory@gmail.com

Madeline Hudalla

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Jewish, Middle East

Madeline Hudalla is a PhD student in History at UCLA, where she studies modern Middle Eastern and Jewish history.  She focuses on Mizrahi, Iraqi, and Iranian history.

Contact Information

Email: mhudalla@ucla.edu

Sara Hussein

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

My research interests include histories of modern Egypt, Pan-Africanism, Afro-Arab anticolonial solidarities, and Third World internationalism.

Contact Information

Email: shussein@g.ucla.edu

Richard Ibarra

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Medieval

Advisor(s): Teofilo Ruiz, Rowan Dorin (History, Stanford), Stefania Tutino, Jessica Goldberg, Meredith Cohen (Art History), Celine Dauverd (History, Univeristy of Colorado-Boulder)

Richard Ibarra is interested in the construction of community (particularly in urban contexts), the extension of communal memory across time and space, and the social and cultural underpinnings of integration and naturalization.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: richardibarraucla@gmail.com

Erdem Ilter

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Erdem Ilter specializes in the late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic history.

Contact Information

Email: erdemilter@g.ucla.edu

Marissa Jenrich

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Contact Information

Email: majenrich@gmail.com

Rachel Kaufman

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Jewish, Latin America

Advisor(s): Kevin Terraciano & Sarah Stein

Rachel Kaufman is a PhD Candidate in Latin American & Jewish History. Her poetic and historical work explore diasporic memory and the ways in which literary and historical works transmit the past, and her dissertation focuses on the Mexican Inquisition and cross-ethnic networks of female religious ritual in colonial New Spain.

Contact Information

Email: rachelkaufman@g.ucla.edu

Ju-Hyun Kim

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Japan

Advisor(s): Katsuya Hirano

Ju-Hyun Kim is a Ph.D. student at the Department of History. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of postcolonial migration of Koreans in the form of repatriation throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

Contact Information

Email: juhyunkim@ucla.edu

Andrew Klein

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Advisor(s): Robin D.G. Kelley (Chair), Peter James Hudson, Toby Higbie, Ananya Roy

Andrew is a Ph.D. candidate researching the intertwined histories of urban development, U.S. empire, and social movements in California.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: ancklein@ucla.edu

Dana Kopel

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Advisor(s): Robin D. G. Kelley

Dana Kopel is a PhD student in History at UCLA. Her research focuses on US labor and working-class organizing in the twentieth century.

Contact Information

Email: dkopel@ucla.edu

Vipin Krishna

Graduate Student

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

Advisor(s): Dr. Vinay Lal

  • South Asian Vernacular Historiography
  • Histories of colonial philology
  • Histories of ethnicity

Contact Information

Email: vipin@g.ucla.edu

Elizabeth Landers

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Advisor(s): Robin Derby, Carla Pestana

Elizabeth’s research centers on the analysis of everyday life practices and the material realities that sustained marginalized communities throughout the broader Atlantic Caribbean during the early modern period.

Contact Information

Email: eml@ucla.edu

Brianna Lavelle

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Jewish

Brianna Lavelle is a PhD student in History at UCLA. Her research interests include Jewish migration in the early twentieth century to the United States and Palestine, histories of mental illness and suicide, and history of emotions.

Contact Information

Email: briannalavelle@ucla.edu

Alex Levine

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Modern Europe

Advisor(s): H. Glenn Penny

Contact Information

Email: alexmaxlevine@g.ucla.edu

Amed Galo Lopez

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Africa

Advisor(s): Robin Kelley, Ghilaine Lydon, and Andrew Apter

Galo focuses on prisons and inmate experiences in twentieth century Kenya, with case studies in Latin America, the United States, and other countries in Africa.

Contact Information

Email: galolopez123@ucla.edu

Marcellin Ma

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Europe

Contact Information



Chris Abdul Hakim Martinez

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Africa

Advisor(s): Robin D.G. Kelley, Alden Young (African American Studies), Andrew Apter

My research interests focus on the history and political economy of decolonization, development, and extractive industries in 20th century West Africa.

Contact Information

Email: chriscmartinez@g.ucla.edu

Rebeca Martinez-Tibbles

Doctoral Candidate

Field of Study: Latin America

Advisor(s): Kevin Terraciano, Teofilo Ruíz, Katherine Marino, Fernando Perez-Montesinos

Rebeca Martínez is a PhD Candidate specializing in the history of women in colonial Mexico. Her dissertation examines the relationship between women and bigamy from the 16th to the 18th century.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: rmartnz165@g.ucla.edu

Joshua McGuffie

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Science, Medicine, and Technology

Advisor(s): Soraya de Chadarevian, Stephen Aron, Ted Porter, Elizabeth DeLoughrey

I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at UCLA. My research focuses on intersections between biology, medicine, race, and the environment during the US atomic project.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: jmcguffi@ucla.edu

Ethan Mefford

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Europe

Contact Information

Email: ethanmefford@gmail.com

Sean Messarra

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Europe

Advisor(s): Peter Stacey (chair), Andrea Moudarres, Anthony Pagden, Stefania Tutino

I study the intellectual history of early modern Europe and the wider history of European political thought.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: smessarra@ucla.edu

Rebekka Michaelsen

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Advisor(s): Brenda Stevenson

Rebekka Michaelsen is a PhD candidate who studies the history of medical incarceration for mental disability in the United States in the early twentieth century.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy 

Contact Information

Email: rmichaelsen@g.ucla.edu

Liam Moore

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Europe

Advisor(s): Caroline Ford

Liam is a PhD student in History at UCLA. His research interests include the history of urban mobility, everyday life, and access to urban space in 19th-20th century France.

Contact Information

Email: liammoore28@g.ucla.edu

Juan Pablo Morales Garza

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Contact Information

Email: juanpablomg7@gmail.com

Patrick Morgan

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Medieval

Advisor(s): Jessica Goldberg (Chair), Teo Ruiz, Sharon Gerstel (Art History), Luke Yarbrough (Near Eastern Languages and Cultures), Alexander Roberts (Classics, USC)

I study the legal history of the Kingdom of Sicily in the twelfth century and its connections to the Mediterranean world.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: patmorgan@g.ucla.edu

Javier Muñoz

Graduate Student

Contact Information



Chul Namgung

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Japan

Advisor(s): Katsuya Hirano

Contact Information

Email: chul0376@ucla.edu

Christopher Null

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Advisor(s): Dr. Michael Meranze

Contact Information

Email: crnull@g.ucla.edu

Marina Nye

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Advisor(s): Dr. Katherine Marino

My research explores the reuse and repurposing of sartorial culture in the 18th-century British Atlantic.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: marinanye@gmail.com

Daniel Ohanian

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Advisor(s): Sebouh Aslanian (chair), Stefania Tutino, James Gelvin, Tijana Krstić, Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Daniel Ohanian is a PhD candidate specializing in early modern and modern Ottoman-Armenian history.

Dissertation title: “Church of Armenia, Church of Rome: Faith, Print, and Power in Ottoman-Armenian History, 1688–1717”

Contact Information

Email: dohanian@ucla.edu

Shubhanga Pandey

Graduate Student

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

Shubhanga works on modern South Asia, with interests in histories of communication, diplomatic and bureaucratic culture, manuscript traditions and textual practices in 18th- and 19th-century Nepal, the Himalaya, and the north Indian subcontinent.

Contact Information



Jessica Pena

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Japan

Advisor(s): William Marotti

Jessica Peña is a History PhD student at UCLA. Her research focuses on feminist activism in post-war Japan, particularly during the U.S. Occupation of Japan 1945 – 1952.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Contact Information

Email: jdpena89@g.ucla.edu

Pin-Hua Chou

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Europe

Advisor(s): Caroline Ford

Pin-Hua Chou is a History PhD student at UCLA. Her research focuses on decolonization of French ethnographic museums from mid-20th century to the present.

Contact Information

Email: phchou42@ucla.edu

Annie Powers

Graduate student

Field of Study: United States

Advisor(s): Robin D. G. Kelley

Annie Powers is a scholar of unhoused people’s political movements in the United States. She studies the history of housing and homelessness – and poor people’s urban land struggle – in the US and the world. Annie is an organizer with Union de Vecinos, the Eastside Local of the Los Angeles Tenants Union.

Contact Information

Email: anniepowers@ucla.edu

Christian Ramirez

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Advisor(s): Fernando Pérez Montesinos

Chris Ramírez is a first year PhD student specializing in the history of Indigenous Mexicans post Independence.

Contact Information

Email: chrisramirez218@ucla.edu

Arrannè Rispoli

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Advisor(s): Carla Pestana

Arranne is a third-year Ph.D. student whose research encompasses the intersection of race and religion in early America.

Contact Information

Email: arrannerispoli@ucla.edu

Rolando Rodriguez

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Contact Information

Email: rjrodriguez@ucla.edu

Ryan Saputo

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Ancient

Advisor(s): Greg Woolf

Contact Information

Email: ryansaputo@g.ucla.edu

Gregory Sattler

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

Advisor(s): Richard von Glahn

My research is focused on the history of sea merchants in East Asia from the ninth to thirteenth centuries.

Contact Information

Email: gsattler@ucla.edu

Lisl Schoepflin

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Advisor(s): Kevin Terraciano (chair), Stella Nair, Efrain Kristal, Juan Ossio, Teo Ruiz

Lisl Schoepflin is a PhD candidate in the UCLA History Department. Her scholarly interests focus on indigenous and colonial ethnohistory and social memory practices in the Andes, with an emphasis on Inca and Spanish colonial oral and literary arts and material culture.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: lisls@g.ucla.edu

Yu Shi

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

Advisor(s): Andrea S. Goldman (Chair), R. Bin Wong, Richard von Glahn, Kathryn Norberg, Helen Rees.

Yu’s research centers on the social and cultural history of late imperial and modern China, with a particular focus on the global media industry, folk performance, urban society, and gender studies.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: shiy@g.ucla.edu

Rachel Smith

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Jewish

Advisor(s): Sarah Abrevaya Stein, David Myers, Aomar Boum, James Gelvin

Rachel Smith is a PhD candidate whose dissertation explores the history and politics of Jewish ethnography in the Ottoman world.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: rachel.smith@ucla.edu

Chase Caldwell Smith

PhD Student & Teaching Associate in History

Field of Study: Latin America

Advisor(s): Kevin Terraciano, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Stefania Tutino, Charlene Villaseñor Black

Chase is a historian of religious knowledge encounters between European missionaries and Nahua peoples in central Mexico. Using textual, visual, and material evidence, Chase explores why and how the making, breaking, and debating of “sacred matter” was a major concern in the construction and negotiation of colonial society between the early sixteenth and late seventeenth centuries.

Contact Information

Email: chasesmith@ucla.edu
Office: Bunche Hall 2113
Phone: 14752580051

Margaret Spaulding

Graduate Student

Contact Information

Email: spauldingmeg@gmail.com

Patrick Stein

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

Patrick studies the impact of novel international trade networks on local communities in the “Eastern Sea” circuit of Fujian, Taiwan, and the Philippines between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Contact Information

Email: patrick.f.stein@gmail.com

Tatiana Sulovska

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Japan

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: sulovska at yahoo dot co dot uk

Madina Thiam

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Africa

Advisor(s): Ghislaine Lydon (Chair); Robin D.G. Kelley; Makhroufi Ousmane Traoré; Minayo Nasiali; Andrew Apter

I completed my PhD in May 2022, with a dissertation entitled “Seeking Freedom in the Sahel: Frontiers of Liberation and Geographies of Belonging in an Atlantic-Saharan Crossroads.”

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: mthiam@ucla.edu

Peter Thomas

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Europe

Advisor(s): Peter Stacey

I study chiefly European intellectual history in those centuries we have learned to call “early modern” (ca. 1300-1800) with a cardinal emphasis on the history of political thought.

Contact Information

Email: prthomas@ucla.edu

Claire Votava

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Science, Medicine, and Technology

Advisor(s): Soraya de Chadarevian

Claire Votava is a Ph.D. student in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. She studies resistance to scientific and technological development in the 19th and 20th centuries, the long history of Luddism, and the making of global capitalism.

Contact Information

Email: votavac@ucla.edu
Office: Bunche 2155

You Wang

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

At the intersection of environmental history, economic history, and the social history of technology, my research examines the everyday interactions of village women and men with water- and landscapes through hydraulic institutions, knowledge production, and a gendered labor regime between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: wangyou@ucla.edu

Rebecca Waxman

Graduate Student

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

Advisor(s): Vinay Lal; Katherine Marino; Robin Derby; Sherene Razack

Rebecca Waxman is a Ph.D. Candidate specializing in the history of gender and sexuality in modern India. Her dissertation examines discourses of sexualized violence in late colonial and postcolonial India.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: rwaxman@g.ucla.edu

Avery Weinman

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Jewish

Advisor(s): David Myers, Sarah Abrevaya Stein

Avery Weinman focuses on modern Jewish history, the history of the modern Middle East, Israel-Palestine, and radicalism.

Contact Information

Email: averyweinman@ucla.edu

Cristi Whiskey

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Africa

Advisor(s): Ghislaine Lydon

Contact Information

Email: whiskeycristi@g.ucla.edu

Hunter Wimpey

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Japan

Advisor(s): Katsuya Hirano

Contact Information

Email: nhwimpey@ucla.edu

William Wood

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

William Wood’s research interests are in legal history, particularly California history and the jurisprudence around Native title in California.  He is an Associate Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School.

Contact Information



Harrison Woods

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Contact Information



Masayoshi Yamada

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Advisor(s): Robin D.G. Kelley (Committee Chair), Eric Avila, Shana L. Redmond, George Lipsitz

Masayoshi Yamada is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at UCLA, specializing in the cultural history of the United States.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: masayoshi1028@ucla.edu

Sofia Yazpik

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Advisor(s): Kevin Terraciano

Contact Information

Email: sofiayazpik@g.ucla.edu

Aisha Zaman

Graduate Student

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

Contact Information

Email: aishazaman@ucla.edu

Mindi Zhang

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

Contact Information

Email: mzhang54@ucla.edu

Martin Adamian

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Contact Information

Email: martin.c.adamian@gmail.com

K Herman Adney

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Kaleb Herman Adney is a PhD candidate whose dissertation research revolves around the political economy of late Ottoman Macedonia and Thrace and the tobacco industry in particular.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: kalebherman@g.ucla.edu

Alice Kiwako Ashiwa

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Japan

Alice Kiwako Ashiwa is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in modern Japanese art, with an interest in the relationship between patronage or institutuional support and avant-garde art, as well the overlaps between “tradition,” “modern,” and “avant-garde”.

Contact Information

Email: aliceashiwa@gmail.com

Chloe Bell-Wilson

Graduate Student

Field of Study: History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

Chloe Bell-Wilson is a PhD candidate who studies the history of synthetic estrogen in the United States.

Contact Information

Email: cbellwilson@g.ucla.edu

Natalie Bernstien

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Jewish

Natalie is a PhD student in History at UCLA, where she works on modern Jewish history. Natalie is primarily interested in the culture, politics, and languages of North African Jewish communities.

Contact Information

Email: nbernstien@g.ucla.edu

Tania Bride

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Contact Information



Michael Buse

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Michael Buse is a PhD student at UCLA researching California, urban history, and the intersections of settler colonialism and heritage work. He is also interested in Russian colonialism and anti-colonial movements throughout the Pacific.

Contact Information

Email: busem@g.ucla.edu

Jennifer Carcamo

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

I am currently a PhD candidate with a focus on modern Central American history.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: jennifer.carcamo@ucla.edu

Michael Castellano

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Ancient

Contact Information

Email: moc3114@ucla.edu

Jeanette Charles

Doctoral Candidate

Field of Study: Latin America, Caribbean, Afro-Atlantic

Jeanette is a PhD candidate focused on Latin American, Caribbean, and Afro-Atlantic histories. Her dissertation centers the relationship and trajectory of Black radicalism, political economy, and popular religions in contemporary Venezuela from 1958-2013.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: jeanettecharles@g.ucla.edu

Sunny Chen

Graduate Student

Field of Study: History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

Contact Information

Email: sunnychen@ucla.edu

Zheng Chen (陳政)

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

Contact Information

Email: zchen0505@g.ucla.edu

Aadarsh Chunkath

Graduate Student

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

I am a historian of South Asia and my research interests broadly encompass the modern period particularly the late colonial state and society, and the anticolonial movement.

Contact Information

Email: aadarshchunkath@gmail.com

Deniz Çıtak

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Deniz Citak is a first year PhD student focusing on the late Ottoman Empire and Qajar Iran. His other research interests include the politics, diplomacy, and culture of modern Turkey, Iran, the Levant, and the Gulf.

Contact Information

Email: dcitak@ucla.edu

Beatriz Cruz-Lopez

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Contact Information

Email: beatrizcruzl@ucla.edu

Michael Dean

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

My research centers around the labor history of California’s prison system. From prison guards to convict labor to free workers, my work focuses on the various ways in which people’s working lives shaped and were shaped by the trajectory of the various carceral booms that have taken place in California.

Contact Information

Email: mikefzdean@ucla.edu
Office: 2155 Bunche Hall

Kayne Doughty

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Kayne is a PhD student in the History Department at UCLA researching 20th century urban California.

Contact Information

Email: kayneadoughty@g.ucla.edu

Thalia Ertman

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

My research is focused on American feminist activism from a transnational perspective in the 1960s and 1970s.

Contact Information

Email: thaliaertman@g.ucla.edu

Benji Fleischacker

Graduate Student

Contact Information

Email: bfleisch@ucla.edu

Desmond Fonseca

Graduate Student

My research interests include Pan-Africanism, black Marxisms, and anti-colonialism with an emphasis on the decolonization of Lusophone Africa in the 1970s, into the neocolonial and neoliberal turn of the 1980s.

Contact Information

Email: dfonseca@g.ucla.edu

Madonna Aoun Ghazal

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

My research explores the relationships between gender, property, and women’s position in the family in late Ottoman Beirut.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: madona_aoun@hotmail.com

Jacob Green

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Science, Medicine, and Technology

Jacob is a historian of science and medicine, and the United States.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: jacobogreen@gmail.com

Carson Greene

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Ancient

Carson is a History PhD student at UCLA, where he studies the Roman empire in Late Antiquity.

Contact Information

Email: carsongreene17@g.ucla.edu

Sara-Marie Greenman-Spear

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Contact Information

Email: sgreenmanspear@ucla.edu

Pranav Gulukota

Graduate Student

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

I am a PhD student interested in the social, political, and intellectual history of twentieth century South India, with particular interest in anticolonial movements, the Telangana Rebellion, and the Dravidian movement.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Contact Information

Email: pranavgulukota6@g.ucla.edu

Britton Gustafson

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Africa

Britton is a first-year History PhD student at UCLA, where he studies African medical history. He focuses on East African and disease history.

Contact Information

Email: brittongus@g.ucla.edu

Yiming Ha

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

My project explores the introduction of a new method of military mobilization to China by the Mongol-Yuan, its subsequent adoption by the succeeding Ming dynasty, and the long-term consequences of this adoption.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: ymingha@ucla.edu

Safa Hamzeh

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Current/Former HGSA Member

Contact Information

Email: safahamzeh@ucla.edu

Xiaowen Hao

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

Contact Information

Email: haoxiaowen@g.ucla.edu

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

Contact Information



Genene Hayle

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Africa

Contact Information



Vivian Hernandez

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Vivian is a History PhD student at UCLA, where she studies modern Latin American women’s and gender history.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Contact Information

Email: vvhernandez@ucla.edu

Lily Hindy

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Lily Hindy is a PhD candidate in History at UCLA whose dissertation research focuses on how the Kurdish nationalist movement in Iraq and in the diaspora utilized the growing bureaucracy of human rights to publicize their plight internationally and gain support for autonomy between the 1970s and 2003.

Contact Information

Email: hindy@g.ucla.edu

Philip Hoffman

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Philip Hoffman is a third-year PhD student, researching the framing of land reform in twentieth-century Syria.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Contact Information

Email: phoffman1@g.ucla.edu

Qianqing Huang

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Japan

Contact Information

Email: hqqrory@gmail.com

Madeline Hudalla

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Jewish, Middle East

Madeline Hudalla is a PhD student in History at UCLA, where she studies modern Middle Eastern and Jewish history.  She focuses on Mizrahi, Iraqi, and Iranian history.

Contact Information

Email: mhudalla@ucla.edu

Sara Hussein

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

My research interests include histories of modern Egypt, Pan-Africanism, Afro-Arab anticolonial solidarities, and Third World internationalism.

Contact Information

Email: shussein@g.ucla.edu

Richard Ibarra

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Medieval

Richard Ibarra is interested in the construction of community (particularly in urban contexts), the extension of communal memory across time and space, and the social and cultural underpinnings of integration and naturalization.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: richardibarraucla@gmail.com

Erdem Ilter

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Erdem Ilter specializes in the late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic history.

Contact Information

Email: erdemilter@g.ucla.edu

Marissa Jenrich

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Contact Information

Email: majenrich@gmail.com

Rachel Kaufman

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Jewish, Latin America

Rachel Kaufman is a PhD Candidate in Latin American & Jewish History. Her poetic and historical work explore diasporic memory and the ways in which literary and historical works transmit the past, and her dissertation focuses on the Mexican Inquisition and cross-ethnic networks of female religious ritual in colonial New Spain.

Contact Information

Email: rachelkaufman@g.ucla.edu

Ju-Hyun Kim

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Japan

Ju-Hyun Kim is a Ph.D. student at the Department of History. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of postcolonial migration of Koreans in the form of repatriation throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

Contact Information

Email: juhyunkim@ucla.edu

Andrew Klein

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Andrew is a Ph.D. candidate researching the intertwined histories of urban development, U.S. empire, and social movements in California.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: ancklein@ucla.edu

Dana Kopel

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Dana Kopel is a PhD student in History at UCLA. Her research focuses on US labor and working-class organizing in the twentieth century.

Contact Information

Email: dkopel@ucla.edu

Vipin Krishna

Graduate Student

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

  • South Asian Vernacular Historiography
  • Histories of colonial philology
  • Histories of ethnicity

Contact Information

Email: vipin@g.ucla.edu

Elizabeth Landers

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Elizabeth’s research centers on the analysis of everyday life practices and the material realities that sustained marginalized communities throughout the broader Atlantic Caribbean during the early modern period.

Contact Information

Email: eml@ucla.edu

Brianna Lavelle

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Jewish

Brianna Lavelle is a PhD student in History at UCLA. Her research interests include Jewish migration in the early twentieth century to the United States and Palestine, histories of mental illness and suicide, and history of emotions.

Contact Information

Email: briannalavelle@ucla.edu

Alex Levine

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Modern Europe

Contact Information

Email: alexmaxlevine@g.ucla.edu

Amed Galo Lopez

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Africa

Galo focuses on prisons and inmate experiences in twentieth century Kenya, with case studies in Latin America, the United States, and other countries in Africa.

Contact Information

Email: galolopez123@ucla.edu

Marcellin Ma

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Europe

Contact Information



Chris Abdul Hakim Martinez

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Africa

My research interests focus on the history and political economy of decolonization, development, and extractive industries in 20th century West Africa.

Contact Information

Email: chriscmartinez@g.ucla.edu

Rebeca Martinez-Tibbles

Doctoral Candidate

Field of Study: Latin America

Rebeca Martínez is a PhD Candidate specializing in the history of women in colonial Mexico. Her dissertation examines the relationship between women and bigamy from the 16th to the 18th century.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: rmartnz165@g.ucla.edu

Joshua McGuffie

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Science, Medicine, and Technology

I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at UCLA. My research focuses on intersections between biology, medicine, race, and the environment during the US atomic project.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: jmcguffi@ucla.edu

Ethan Mefford

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Europe

Contact Information

Email: ethanmefford@gmail.com

Sean Messarra

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Europe

I study the intellectual history of early modern Europe and the wider history of European political thought.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: smessarra@ucla.edu

Rebekka Michaelsen

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Rebekka Michaelsen is a PhD candidate who studies the history of medical incarceration for mental disability in the United States in the early twentieth century.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy 

Contact Information

Email: rmichaelsen@g.ucla.edu

Liam Moore

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Europe

Liam is a PhD student in History at UCLA. His research interests include the history of urban mobility, everyday life, and access to urban space in 19th-20th century France.

Contact Information

Email: liammoore28@g.ucla.edu

Juan Pablo Morales Garza

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Contact Information

Email: juanpablomg7@gmail.com

Patrick Morgan

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Medieval

I study the legal history of the Kingdom of Sicily in the twelfth century and its connections to the Mediterranean world.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: patmorgan@g.ucla.edu

Javier Muñoz

Graduate Student

Contact Information



Chul Namgung

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Japan

Contact Information

Email: chul0376@ucla.edu

Christopher Null

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Contact Information

Email: crnull@g.ucla.edu

Marina Nye

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

My research explores the reuse and repurposing of sartorial culture in the 18th-century British Atlantic.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: marinanye@gmail.com

Daniel Ohanian

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Daniel Ohanian is a PhD candidate specializing in early modern and modern Ottoman-Armenian history.

Dissertation title: “Church of Armenia, Church of Rome: Faith, Print, and Power in Ottoman-Armenian History, 1688–1717”

Contact Information

Email: dohanian@ucla.edu

Shubhanga Pandey

Graduate Student

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

Shubhanga works on modern South Asia, with interests in histories of communication, diplomatic and bureaucratic culture, manuscript traditions and textual practices in 18th- and 19th-century Nepal, the Himalaya, and the north Indian subcontinent.

Contact Information



Jessica Pena

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Japan

Jessica Peña is a History PhD student at UCLA. Her research focuses on feminist activism in post-war Japan, particularly during the U.S. Occupation of Japan 1945 – 1952.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Contact Information

Email: jdpena89@g.ucla.edu

Pin-Hua Chou

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Europe

Pin-Hua Chou is a History PhD student at UCLA. Her research focuses on decolonization of French ethnographic museums from mid-20th century to the present.

Contact Information

Email: phchou42@ucla.edu

Annie Powers

Graduate student

Field of Study: United States

Annie Powers is a scholar of unhoused people’s political movements in the United States. She studies the history of housing and homelessness – and poor people’s urban land struggle – in the US and the world. Annie is an organizer with Union de Vecinos, the Eastside Local of the Los Angeles Tenants Union.

Contact Information

Email: anniepowers@ucla.edu

Christian Ramirez

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Chris Ramírez is a first year PhD student specializing in the history of Indigenous Mexicans post Independence.

Contact Information

Email: chrisramirez218@ucla.edu

Arrannè Rispoli

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Arranne is a third-year Ph.D. student whose research encompasses the intersection of race and religion in early America.

Contact Information

Email: arrannerispoli@ucla.edu

Rolando Rodriguez

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Contact Information

Email: rjrodriguez@ucla.edu

Ryan Saputo

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Ancient

Contact Information

Email: ryansaputo@g.ucla.edu

Gregory Sattler

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

My research is focused on the history of sea merchants in East Asia from the ninth to thirteenth centuries.

Contact Information

Email: gsattler@ucla.edu

Lisl Schoepflin

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Lisl Schoepflin is a PhD candidate in the UCLA History Department. Her scholarly interests focus on indigenous and colonial ethnohistory and social memory practices in the Andes, with an emphasis on Inca and Spanish colonial oral and literary arts and material culture.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: lisls@g.ucla.edu

Yu Shi

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

Yu’s research centers on the social and cultural history of late imperial and modern China, with a particular focus on the global media industry, folk performance, urban society, and gender studies.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: shiy@g.ucla.edu

Rachel Smith

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Jewish

Rachel Smith is a PhD candidate whose dissertation explores the history and politics of Jewish ethnography in the Ottoman world.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: rachel.smith@ucla.edu

Chase Caldwell Smith

PhD Student & Teaching Associate in History

Field of Study: Latin America

Chase is a historian of religious knowledge encounters between European missionaries and Nahua peoples in central Mexico. Using textual, visual, and material evidence, Chase explores why and how the making, breaking, and debating of “sacred matter” was a major concern in the construction and negotiation of colonial society between the early sixteenth and late seventeenth centuries.

Contact Information

Email: chasesmith@ucla.edu
Office: Bunche Hall 2113
Phone: 14752580051

Margaret Spaulding

Graduate Student

Contact Information

Email: spauldingmeg@gmail.com

Patrick Stein

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

Patrick studies the impact of novel international trade networks on local communities in the “Eastern Sea” circuit of Fujian, Taiwan, and the Philippines between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Contact Information

Email: patrick.f.stein@gmail.com

Tatiana Sulovska

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Japan

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: sulovska at yahoo dot co dot uk

Madina Thiam

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Africa

I completed my PhD in May 2022, with a dissertation entitled “Seeking Freedom in the Sahel: Frontiers of Liberation and Geographies of Belonging in an Atlantic-Saharan Crossroads.”

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: mthiam@ucla.edu

Peter Thomas

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Europe

I study chiefly European intellectual history in those centuries we have learned to call “early modern” (ca. 1300-1800) with a cardinal emphasis on the history of political thought.

Contact Information

Email: prthomas@ucla.edu

Claire Votava

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Science, Medicine, and Technology

Claire Votava is a Ph.D. student in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. She studies resistance to scientific and technological development in the 19th and 20th centuries, the long history of Luddism, and the making of global capitalism.

Contact Information

Email: votavac@ucla.edu
Office: Bunche 2155

You Wang

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

At the intersection of environmental history, economic history, and the social history of technology, my research examines the everyday interactions of village women and men with water- and landscapes through hydraulic institutions, knowledge production, and a gendered labor regime between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: wangyou@ucla.edu

Rebecca Waxman

Graduate Student

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

Rebecca Waxman is a Ph.D. Candidate specializing in the history of gender and sexuality in modern India. Her dissertation examines discourses of sexualized violence in late colonial and postcolonial India.

Current/Former HGSA Member

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: rwaxman@g.ucla.edu

Avery Weinman

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Jewish

Avery Weinman focuses on modern Jewish history, the history of the modern Middle East, Israel-Palestine, and radicalism.

Contact Information

Email: averyweinman@ucla.edu

Cristi Whiskey

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Africa

Contact Information

Email: whiskeycristi@g.ucla.edu

Hunter Wimpey

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Japan

Contact Information

Email: nhwimpey@ucla.edu

William Wood

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

William Wood’s research interests are in legal history, particularly California history and the jurisprudence around Native title in California.  He is an Associate Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School.

Contact Information



Harrison Woods

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Middle East

Contact Information



Masayoshi Yamada

Graduate Student

Field of Study: United States

Masayoshi Yamada is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at UCLA, specializing in the cultural history of the United States.

Advanced to Candidacy

Contact Information

Email: masayoshi1028@ucla.edu

Sofia Yazpik

Graduate Student

Field of Study: Latin America

Contact Information

Email: sofiayazpik@g.ucla.edu

Aisha Zaman

Graduate Student

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

Contact Information

Email: aishazaman@ucla.edu

Mindi Zhang

Graduate Student

Field of Study: China

Contact Information

Email: mzhang54@ucla.edu