Megan French

Ph.D. Candidate
Department of History -- United States

Megan’s research interests include urban politics and policy, as well as global Black freedom struggles. Megan received her B.A. in Comparative Literature from New York University and an M.A. in African American History from Columbia.

Arunabh Ghosh

Ph. D. Candidate
Department of History -- East Asia

Arunabh’s areas of research are the political, social, and economic history of Modern China. His current interests include population studies and the history of science and social science. Arunabh also is interested in comparative and global history. Arunabh received his B.A. from Haverford College.

Katie Gradowski

Ph.D. Candidate
Department of English & Comparative Literature

Katie’s field is modernism and twentieth-century literature, with a focus on nationalism, imperialism, and material culture in early twentieth-century British literature. She received her B.A. from Johns Hopkins University in 2005.

Teresa Harris

Ph.D. Candidate
Art History & Archaeology

Teresa’s research interests include early twentieth-century German architecture and urban planning, with an emphasis on the intersection of social and aesthetic reform. Her dissertation investigates the intellectual history and built work of the German Garden City Movement. Teresa received her B.A. in Art History from Williams College in 1998.

Annie Holt

Ph.D. Candidate
Department of English & Comparative Literature
-- Theatre

Annie currently studies theatre and opera at Columbia, and works as a director, dramaturge, and costume designer in the New York area. She received a B.A. in Dramaturgy from the University of Virginia in 2006, and a Beinecke Fellowship in 2005.

Justin Jackson

Ph.D. Candidate
Department of History -- United States

Justin Jackson studies nineteenth- and twentieth-century American history; his research interests include the history of labor and the left, social movements, imperialism and foreign policy, and the history of political culture. He is a native of Maine, received his B.A. from Hampshire College, and his M.A. in History from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Before beginning graduate school Justin worked as a teacher and journalist.

Thai Jones

Ph.D. Candidate
Department of History -- United States

Thai Jones -- author of A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience (Free Press, 2004) -- used multiple aliases before he reached the age of four. Since then, however, he has been on the up and up. A graduate of Columbia Journalism School, he worked as a reporter for Newsday before retreating back to campus. His research focuses on radical labor politics in U.S. history. At the RBML, he has helped process several collections, including The New Leader Records, as well as the papers of Ephraim London and Jason Rogers.

Alexandra Kotar

M.A. Candidate
Department of Slavic Languages and Literature

"Alix is researching the cultural history of the first-wave of Russian emigration to Europe and Asia during the early-twentieth century. She has recently expanded her interests to include the field of literary translation, especially that of personal memoirs.  One of Alix's current projects involves the archival collection of émigré activist Alexander Kazem-Bek.  Alix received her B.A. in English at the University of San Francisco in May 2007.

Kirk Lyons

Ph.D. Candidate
Union Theological Seminary -- New
Testament and Early Christian Origins

Kirk’s work focuses on the interpretation and application of the Pauline corpus in various historical settings. His current research is based on how New Testament writings have been used as tools of domination and liberation within the African Diaspora. Kirk is an adjunct professor at the New York Theological Seminary where he teaches courses in Biblical Exegesis and New Testament, and he has written articles on Pentecostalism, African-American Biblical interpretation, the Bible and Slavery.

Lindsay McCook

M.S. Candidate
Historic Preservation

Lindsay, whose Master’s thesis will focus on modern architecture in New Orleans, is an editor of Future Anterior, a historic preservation journal published by the University of Minnesota Press. She served as an Americorps VISTA in New Orleans post-Katrina and most recently worked conserving monuments throughout New York City. Lindsay received a Bachelors of Architectural History from the University of Virginia in May 2006.

Annie Rudd

Ph. D. Candidate
Graduate School of Journalism -- Communications

Annie’s research interests include American journalism history, critical theory, visual culture and modernity; more concretely, she hopes to focus on early photojournalism in New York City. She graduated from the University of Toronto in 2007, with a B.A. in English, Book and Media Studies and American Studies.

Dan Vaca

Ph. D. Candidate
Department of Religion

Dan specializes in American religious history and culture. He works mainly on Protestantism in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and particularly on issues relating to evangelical Christianity, commercial culture, and the history of the book. Dan came to Columbia after receiving degrees from the College of William and Mary and Cambridge University.

Brad Walters

Ph. D. Candidate
Architecture

Brad specializes in modern architectural history and theory, with a focus on post-World War II France. The curator of several archival exhibitions, Brad received an A.B. from Amherst College and an M.E.D. degree from the Yale School of Architecture, where he served as editor of Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal.