Graduate students

Noah Cole studies the ideologies of factionalism in northern Italy in the 15th century. He is also the secretary of the HGSA. As such he organizes its meetings, takes notes, and creates action items. In this interview, Cole talks about the role the HGSA plays in the department.

Christopher Loman came to FSU as an undergraduate and is currently completing his master's degree. As treasurer, he handles the budgetary aspects of the HGSA. In this interview, Loman emphasizes the importance of the HGSA for support and providing opportunities for graduate students like presenting at their annual conference.

The HGSA is an important part of graduate student life. In this article, Danielle Wirsansky shares how she came to History and talks about her role as vice president organizing the annual graduate student conference.

Find out more about History's graduate student association. In this interview, we hear from Monique Hyman about her graduate school career and her involvement in the HGSA.

Read about doing research in Serbian archives in this interview with Dragana Zivkovic. Zivkovic’s research explores the lives of middle and upper-class women in the late 18th-early 19th century in the Balkans, an area that was closely connected to the rest of Europe.

In her Ph.D. dissertation, Baylee Staufenbiel works on the medieval medical theory that women have a seven-chambered uterus. In this interview, she discusses her research across multiple countries to discover the oldest text mentioning this concept.

I am Alice Zhang; I am a fourth-year PhD candidate in History at Florida State University. I am working on the history of Chinese adoptions to the U.S. In spring 2023, I was on a Walbolt fellowship that allowed me to go to Minneapolis for research. I worked at the International Social Welfare History Archive on the campus of the University of Minnesota.

In this interview, Daniel Arenas, a PhD candidate working on Napoleonic Europe under the supervision of Dr. Blaufarb, talks about his research in archives in France and Spain. His dissertation topic is the French occupation of Spain from 1808 to 1814. Arenas came to Florida State University in 2014 for his undergrad and joined the PhD program in 2018.

Congratulations to Noah Cole and Huaqing Shi for receiving the 2022 Wright Research Paper award and Megan Groninger and Randy Smookler for receiving the 2022 Richardson Teaching Award.

The HGSA was founded in 1997 and has been a part of graduate student life in the History Department ever since. Here we speak with Rhiannon Turgel-Ethier, the current president, and Dragana Zikovic, the communications officer, about their dissertation research and their involvement with the HGSA.