RESEARCH INTERESTS

Early modern Britain and its empire; history of Christianity; religion and empire; pilgrimage studies

BIOGRAPHY

I am a PhD student in the History Department and a Neubauer Family Distinguished Doctoral Fellow here at UChicago. I study the religious history of early modern England and its empire. I became interested in this period initially because of my undergraduate work in pilgrimage studies. In my research I explore how global colonization shaped English Christian ideology. Prior to my time at UChicago, I earned a BA in History from Stanford University and spent my free time backpacking over 3000 miles along medieval pilgrimage paths through Europe. Most recently, I walked from Canterbury to Rome along the route taken by Archbishop Sigeric in the year 990. 

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Contemporary African history, with a particular focus on West Africa and, specifically, Ghana. 

His areas of study encompass a diverse range of topics, including:

• Women
• Military
• Legal history
• Gender and sexuality
• Marginalization of women
• Oral history as a method for understanding historical memories
• U.S. women during the Antebellum era

BIOGRAPHY

Yasir Arafat Ibrahim is currently a PhD student in the History Department at the University of Chicago. He earned his bachelor’s degree in history from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, where he explored the causes leading to the decline of Ghana Airways as part of his undergraduate research. Following this, he obtained a Master’s Degree in History from Indiana State University.

His Master’s thesis focuses on the position and experiences of Ghanaian women during the administration of the Provincial National Defense Council (PNDC) under Chairman Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, spanning the years 1981 to 1992. In this work, he contends that the PNDC regime functioned as a participatory democratic government rather than a strictly military regime, emphasizing the involvement of women in the government.

As Yasir embarks on his research journey at the University of Chicago, for his first-year research paper he aims to expand on his previous work by investigating the policies and programs implemented by the PNDC to enhance women's welfare. He is particularly interested in highlighting how this regime was the first to introduce initiatives that included and promoted women's welfare in Ghana. Yasir is dedicated to amplifying the voices and experiences of women through his scholarship, ensuring that their stories are not only acknowledged but celebrated.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

German history; Soviet History; the Cold War; the German Democratic Republic (East Germany); cultural exchange; memory; monuments & memorials; cities; empire

BIOGRAPHY

I am a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and I attended Indiana University for my undergraduate degree and double majored in History and Germanic Studies. While at Indiana University, I  studied abroad in Berlin, Germany; The Hague, The Netherlands; and Freiburg, Germany. I graduated from Indiana University with High Distinction and History Honors and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Delta Phi Alpha.

After graduating from Indiana University, I earned my MA/MSc in International and World History at Columbia University and the London School of Economics, graduating with Distinction. I received the Delta Spirit Award Scholarship, the Alliance Fellowship for Summer Research and Language Training, and the Gold Medal for the ACTR Essay Contest for level A1 Russian. In the summer between the two academic years, I studied Russian in Daugavpils, Latvia, and conducted research in the German Federal Archives in Berlin. For my Master’s Dissertation, I studied East German-Soviet exchange during the 1960s, focusing on how East German governmental discourse about organized excursions to the USSR promoted the GDR within the Soviet Bloc.

Before starting at the University of Chicago, I completed a year’s worth of Russian language training at Indiana University’s Summer Language Workshop and was awarded a Title VIII Fellowship and earned the Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement.

At the University of Chicago, I am interested exploring the relationship between the German Democratic Republic and the Soviet Union and plan to use my German and Russian language skills to conduct research.

I am happy to speak with prospective graduate students or to anyone with similar interests.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

history of the Soviet Union; history of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia; contemporary Russian politics; social and cultural history; intellectual history; public history; theory of history, epistemology.

I study the history of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia with a particular interest in social, cultural, and intellectual history. My works revolve around questions related to identity, memory, semiotics, social changes, and everyday life. Besides, I have a strong interest in public history and contemporary Russian politics, which drives me to engage in public writing.

BIOGRAPHY

I was born and raised in Ukhta, Komi Republic, Russia. In 2022, I graduated with a BA in History from the Higher School of Economics (HSE University) in Moscow. My research focused on Soviet childhood, Soviet schools, and the legacy of Soviet policies in contemporary Russian education. I also had the wonderful opportunity to assist in research at the university’s Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences.

In 2024, I received an MA in History from Miami University in Ohio. During my master’s program, I taught history classes as a graduate assistant and worked on cataloging Russian sources in the university’s Walter Havighurst Special Collections over the summer months.

My master’s thesis examined open-air markets in the post-Soviet era. The project reconstructed the history of the Cherkizovsky market and explored its symbolic meaning in Russia. Based on the case of Cherkizovsky, I drew conclusions on how street trade and open-air markets epitomized the idea of economic freedom and privatization of public space.

My most recent article on the monuments to shuttle traders in post-Soviet states was recognized as the winner of the 2024 Midwest Slavic Association Essay Competition and received an honorable mention for the 2024 ASEEES Beth Holmgren Graduate Student Essay Prize as an outstanding essay by a graduate student in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

PUBLICATIONS

“The Great Symbolic War, or Why Felix Dzerzhinsky Is Back.” NYU Jordan Center, October 4, 2023.

INTERESTS

Political Economy; Colonial Latin America; Early Modern Britain and its Empire; Comparative Empires; Age of Revolutions

BIOGRAPHY

Zachariah Sippy is a first-year PhD student in History. He studies the political economy of late eighteenth century imperialism, with a focus on the British and Spanish Empires. He is more broadly interested in the Age of Revolutions, the history of capitalism, and comparative research methods. Prior to beginning at the University of Chicago, Zachariah spent a year in Argentina on a research fellowship. He holds an A.B. in History from Princeton University and is from Lexington, Kentucky.  

Please feel free to reach out to discuss shared research interests.  

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Anticolonial nationalism; Back-to-Africa thought; Black theological movements; Christian missionaries and empire; decolonization; Liberia; slavery and abolition; race and religion; U.S. imperialism

BIOGRAPHY

I am a member of the History Department’s 2024 cohort and a Neubauer Family Distinguished Doctoral Fellow. I study how Christian discourse has shaped the modern making of race, particularly as regards Liberia. I spent the three years before coming here at Yale Divinity School, where I received a Master of Divinity (2024). That experience informs how I seek to consider race and religion as categories that co-constitute one another.

My interests also stem from research that I have conducted about the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company—which has, since 1926, run the world’s largest contiguous rubber plantation in Liberia. As a volunteer with the Princeton and Slavery Project, I examined how Firestone’s exploitation of Liberia propelled Princeton University’s modern rise. In 2023, I traveled to Liberia through a Graduate Research Fellowship with Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Abolition, and Resistance.

I hold an A.B. in History, with certificates in African Studies and Spanish Language and Culture, from Princeton University (2021). My senior thesis traced, contrary to predominant narratives, how in 1938 Jamaican laborers devised insurgent tactics against British rule. In 2020, I served as Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Princetonian, Princeton’s independent, daily student newspaper.

I am a 2023 alum of Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE), As a member of FASPE’s Clergy & Religious Leaders cohort, I considered the moral responsibilities—and risks—that result from the mantle of professional authority. I have also worked part-time at the Project M.O.R.E. Reentry Welcome Center, a nonprofit that serves residents returning home from incarceration in New Haven, Connecticut.

I am always glad to connect with prospective students and anyone who shares similar interests.

SELECTED WORK

• “When justice means impunity,” Africa Is A Country, Oct. 15, 2024
• “PAWcast: Jon Ort ’21 on Firestone’s Forced Labor and Donations to Princeton,” Princeton Alumni Weekly, Feb. 2, 2023
• “How Firestone exploited Liberia — and made Princeton as we know it,” The Daily Princetonian, Dec. 7, 2022
• “What Princeton Owes to Firestone’s Exploitation of Liberia,” Princeton & Slavery Project, Dec. 6, 2022

RESEARCH INTERESTS

19th century US, intellectual history, labor history, history of capitalism, political economy, slavery and abolition, philosophy of history

BIOGRAPHY

I am a joint PhD student in the Department of History and the Committee on Social Thought. Before coming to Chicago, I worked for a few years as an assistant editor at Jacobin magazine, for which I still occasionally write. In 2022, I received an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History from Trinity College, Cambridge, supported by a Dunlevie King's Hall Studentship. My MPhil thesis offered a close reading of Henry Thoreau and Karl Marx that investigated similarities in their analyses of labor, history, and value. I graduated from Princeton University in 2021 with a BA in history, with a thesis that studied antebellum slaveholders' conceptions of "labor" in theoretical writings and in plantation management. 

I also currently serve as a contributing editor at the Journal of the History of Ideas blog, where I publish interviews with academics from time to time. Feel free to pitch me an article, too!

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• “Human Labor and Natural Labor in Henry David Thoreau’s Works.” Modern Intellectual History, 2024, 1–23.
• “A Natural Critic of Political Economy: Thoreau, Marx, and the Temporal Problem of Labor.” In Radical Transcendentalisms, ed. Alex Moskowitz and Ted Stolze (Leiden: Brill Historical Materialism Series, forthcoming in 2025).
• “Slavery, Capitalism, and the Politics of Abolition.” Review of Robin Blackburn, The Reckoning: From the Second Slavery to Abolition, 1776–1888 (Verso, 2024). Jacobin, May 19, 2024.