Alice Kiwako Ashiwa is a Ph.D. student specializing in Japanese postwar art and visual culture.

Field of Study: Japan

My research looks to understand cultural and legal approaches to violence and feud in the Medieval Mediterranean. I graduated with a BA in History with a minor in Medieval and Renaissance Studies from University of San Diego in 2018.

Field of Study: Medieval

Advisor(s): Jessica Goldberg

Current/Former HGSA Member

Field of Study: Japan

My research focuses on the African Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean with an emphasis on Black radicalism, spirituality, political economy, internationalism, and anti-imperialism.

Field of Study: Latin America

Advisor(s): Robin Derby

Field of Study: United States

Max Modiano Daniel is a doctoral candidate in the History department at UCLA.

Field of Study: Jewish

Advanced to Candidacy

My research focuses on the theoretical foundations of the modern European state during their development in the early modern period.

Field of Study: Europe

Advisor(s): Peter Stacey (chair), Stefania Tutino, Andrea Moudarres, Craig Yirush

Advanced to Candidacy

My research interests include Pan-Africanism, Black Marxism(s) and anti-colonialism with an emphasis on the decolonization of southern and Lusophone Africa, and the relationships between liberation movements across the Black world.

Field of Study: China

Thabisile Griffin is a PhD Candidate in History at UCLA, where she specializes in the 18th century Atlantic world.

Advisor(s): Robin D.G Kelley, Carla Pestana, Aisha Finch, Robin Derby

Advanced to Candidacy

My research looks into the institutional, military, and fiscal structures of imperial China from the Song to the Ming period, focusing particularly on how the Mongols impacted the state's employment and retention of personnel.

Field of Study: China

Field of Study: Africa

Philip Hoffman is a second-year PhD student, researching the framing of land reform in modern Syria.

Field of Study: Middle East

Advisor(s): James Gelvin

Current/Former HGSA Member

I study political ideologies and political cultures of the later Middle Ages, focusing on the kingdom of Castile.

Field of Study: Medieval

Advisor(s): Teofilo Ruiz, John Dagenais, Jessica Goldberg, Peter Stacey, Kevin Terraciano

Advanced to Candidacy

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

Field of Study: Middle East

Field of Study: Jewish

Advanced to Candidacy

Field of Study: China

Janice Levi is a PhD candidate in the UCLA History Department. Her dissertation focuses on migration histories and Jewish populations in West Africa.  

Field of Study: Africa

Advisor(s): Ghislaine Lydon, Andrew Apter, Sarah A. Stein, Robin D. G. Kelley, Aomar Boum

Advanced to Candidacy

Field of Study: Europe

Field of Study: Latin America

Current/Former HGSA Member

I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at UCLA. My research focuses on the doctors and biologists who first studied the biological effects of radiation from the 1920s through the 1960s.

Field of Study: Science, Medicine, and Technology

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

Advanced to Candidacy

Current/Former HGSA Member

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

Field of Study: Europe

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

Advanced to Candidacy

Field of Study: Latin America

Javier is a PhD Candidate studying twentieth-century United States history. He focuses on social movements, race-making, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, migration, and the African Diaspora.

Field of Study: United States

Advisor(s): Robin D. G. Kelley (Chair), Gaye Theresa Johnson, Peter James Hudson, Minayo Nasiali

My work examines historical intersections between caste exclusion, colonialism, and cultural affinities towards landscapes.

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

Advanced to Candidacy

Marina is a second year PhD student in the history department. Her research interest lies in 18th and 19th century sartorial and material culture.

Field of Study: United States

Advisor(s): Dr. Katherine Marino

Bernard is a PhD Candidate in the United States field researching the history of Filipino popular culture, labor, and migration in California during the twentieth century.  

Field of Study: United States

Advisor(s): Eric Avila (Co-chair, UCLA Dept. of History, UCLA Dept. of Chicana & Chicano Studies), Toby Higbie (Co-chair, UCLA Dept. of History, UCLA Labor & Workplace Studies), Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns (UCLA Dept. of Asian American Studies), George Lipsitz (UCSB Dept. of Black Studies)

Advanced to Candidacy

Current/Former HGSA Member

Lisl Schoepflin is a PhD candidate in the UCLA History Department, previously receiving her M.A. at UCLA and B.A. at University of Pennsylvania.

Field of Study: Latin America

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

Advanced to Candidacy

Chase's research interests center thematically on histories of cultural encounters, race and identity, religious conversion, and knowledge production, and geographically on the early modern Iberian empires in maritime Southeast Asia.

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

David B. Spielman is an Africanist and Ethiopian historian with a broader interest in the Horn of Africa.

Field of Study: Africa

Advisor(s): Ghislaine Lydon (Chair);William Worger;Allen Roberts;Habtamu Tegegne.

Advanced to Candidacy

I work on the social and intellectual history of Mali and the West African Sahel, with an emphasis on Islam. My dissertation is a study on freedom and mobility in the region in 19th and 20th centuries.

Field of Study: Africa

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

Advanced to Candidacy

Field of Study: South and Southeast Asia

Current/Former HGSA Member

Field of Study: Africa

Advisor(s): Ghislaine Lydon 

William Wood's research interests are in legal history, particularly California history, land rights of Indigenous peoples, and the jurisprudence around Native title in California.  He is also a Visiting Associate Professor of Law

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.   

Field of Study: United States

Advisor(s): Robin D.G. Kelley (Committee Chair)Eric AvilaShana L. RedmondGeorge Lipsitz

Advanced to Candidacy