By Cassandra Cloutier, Associate Director of Research & Executive Coordinator of the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium

The Massachusetts Historical Society’s Research Department is pleased to announce the 2026-2027 cohort of research fellows. Each year, the MHS provides financial support for scholars producing original scholarship based on our unique collections.

During the 2026-2027 award year, the MHS will administer a variety of short-term fellowships that cover four to eight weeks of research. In addition to sponsoring research at the MHS, the Society also administers the Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship on the Civil War, Its Origins, and Consequences in collaboration with the Boston Athenaeum. In addition, the Society administers the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium award in collaboration with twenty-nine other regional institutions.  

The projects awarded for this year’s cohort span the seventeenth century to the present day and explore a variety of topics including women in the early American republic, the history of capitalism, African American caretakers, Reconstruction-era society, the post-war American military, and more. Others are examining material culture, food systems, and natural disasters throughout American history. At the 250^th anniversary of the American Revolution, several scholars are analyzing the founding of the country and various aspects of the conflict and its actors.

Please see the list of recipients and their projects below. We look forward to learning more about these projects in the coming year!

Short-Term Fellows 2026-2027

• Barnes, Mollie, Associate Professor, University of South Carolina Beaufort, “Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney and Nineteenth-Century Women’s Lives” (Ruth R. Miller Fellowship)

• Bennett, Zachary, Assistant Professor, Norwich University, “Conquering the Dawn: New England’s Anglo-Wabanaki Wars” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars in Massachusetts)

• Bowthorpe, Avonlea, Ph.D. Candidate, College of William and Mary, “Confidence and Coercion: Gender and Economic Agency in the British Atlantic, 1713-1800” (W.B.H. Dowse Fellowship)

• Boyer, Emily, Ph.D. Student, Northeastern University, “Lemuel Shattuck: 19th Century Boston, Public Health, and the Creation of Modern U.S. Genealogy Practices” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

• Brian, Amber, Associate Professor, University of Iowa, “Prescott and the Foundation of Hispanic Studies in the U.S.” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

• Brooking, Greg, Independent Scholar, “Henry Laurens: A Southern Founder” (Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship)

• Carabatsos, Julia, Ph.D. Candidate, Columbia University, “Album Logic: Assembling and Arranging America in Nineteenth-Century Art” (Andrew Oliver Research Fellowship)

• Covington-Ward, Yolanda, Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, “Diasporas within Africa: Identity, Culture, and Christianity among Congo Recaptives in Nineteenth Century Liberia” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

• Criswell, Joel, Ph.D. Student, Texas A&M University, “Honorable Insanity: How Abolitionists Reimagined Madness in 19th Century U.S.” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

• Davis, Indy, Ph.D. Candidate, Princeton University, “In the Name of Guardianship: Law and the Frailty of Incapacity” (Benjamin F. Stevens Fellowship)

• Del Santo, Christopher, Ph.D. Candidate, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, “The Lycurgan Moment: Classical Slavery, Modern Government, and the Politics of History in the Early American Republic” (Marc Friedlaender Fellowship)

• Flecha, Jesse, Graduate Student, Texas A&M University, “International Slavery, International Freedom: The Grant Administration’s Effort to End American Slavery Abroad” (Elizabeth Woodman Wright Fellowship)

• Gandolfo-Lucia, Nicholas, Ph.D. Student, Brown University, “Paper Money Between Empire and Capitalism in the Eighteenth-Century North Atlantic World” (W.B.H. Dowse Fellowship)

• Gonzalez, Alfredo, Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and the American Foreign Legion” (Abigail Bowen Wright Fellowship)

• Haynes, Olivia, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, “Unseen Hands: Black Midwives, Care, and Belonging in the Early American North” (Alyson R. Miller Fellowship)

• Heckart, Jordann, Ph.D. Candidate, Baylor University, “Dissenting Women: How Women Responded to Church-State Relations, 1730-1833” (C. Conrad & Elizabeth H. Wright Fellowship)

• Hogue, Sarah Anne, Ph.D. Candidate, The University of Southern Mississippi, “Military Deputy Husbandship, Divorce, and Women’s Economic Responsibilities During Warfare, 1639-1783” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars in Massachusetts)

• Kelly, Matthew, Assistant Professor, University of Washington, “Taken for Granted: Indigenous Land, Capital, and the Origins of American Common Schools” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

• Lincoln, Angelina, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Maryland, College Park, “African American Children and their Caretakers in and around the Civil War’s Refugee Camps” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

• Majerowicz, Daniel, Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Riverside, “Negotiating the Commonwealth: Jurisdiction, Sovereignty, and State-Building in Early Pennsylvania, 1681-1720” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

• McKenna, Nicholas, Ph.D. Candidate, Johns Hopkins University, “Before the Shot (Heard ‘Round the World)” (Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellowship)

• Palazzolo, Elena, Assistant Professor, University of Mississippi, “Modern Fare: Reconstructing the U.S. Food System, 1862-1906” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

• Peterka, Aaron, Independent Scholar, “The Responsibility of Victory: American Citizen-Soldiers and the GI Mutinies of 1945-1946” (Military Historical Society of Massachusetts Fellowship)

• Rosch, Cat, Ph.D. Candidate, Brandeis University, “Eccentric Troops and Grassroots Forces: College Women, Reproductive Health, and Activism in Massachusetts, 1960-1973” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

• Rothe, Brayden, Ph.D. Student, University of Minnesota, “Counting the Consequences: Francis Amasa Walker, Statistical Authority, and the Remaking of the Nation after the Civil War” (Louis Leonard Tucker Alumni Fellowship)

• Sauers, Cameron, Ph.D. Candidate, Pennsylvania State University, “Raising Free Laborers: Institutions, Indenture, and Children at Work in 19th Century America” (Louis Leonard Tucker Alumni Fellowship)

• Scouller, Wulfstan, Ph.D. Candidate, Yale University, “Enterprizing War: How Merchants Shaped King Philip’s War” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars in Massachusetts)

• Stanley, Matthew, Associate Professor, University of Arkansas, “Capital Reconciliation: Owners, Workers, and the Political Economy of Civil War Reunion” (Governor John A. Andrew Fellowship)

• Stanton, Grant, Assistant Professor, Drew University, “The Language of Liberty: Black Politics and the Law of Antislavery in Revolutionary Massachusetts” (African American Studies Fellowship)

• Sweat-Montoya, Sydney, Ph.D. Candidate, College of William & Mary, “Evading Empire: Commercial Networks and Illicit Trade in the Western Circum-Caribbean, 1630-1800” (Kenneth and Carol Hills Fellowship in Colonial History)

• Urus, Arianne, Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University, “Common Shores: A Political Ecology of the Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland Cod Fisheries” (Mary B. Wright Environmental History Fellowship)

Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship (jointly awarded with the Boston Athenaeum)

• Bowen, Alexander, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Georgia, “A Land of Gilded Promises: Florida in the Long Gilded Age, 1865-1926”

New England Regional Fellowship Consortium Fellows visiting the MHS

• Allukian, Kristin, Associate Professor, University of South Florida, “Letters from Lowell: New Perspectives on the Epistolary Culture of America’s First Female Industrial Class”

• Bennett, Zachary, Assistant Professor, Norwich University, “Conquering the Dawn: New England’s Anglo-Wabanaki Wars”

• Blum, Edward, Professor, San Diego State University, “A Republic that Counts: How Data Broke the British Empire and Made an American One”

• Bose, Neilesh, Professor, University of Victoria, “Charles Dall, India, and Indian Religion in Nineteenth Century New England”

• Bouwkamp, Julia, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Pennsylvania, “Bodies of Critique: Women, Writing, and the Politics of the Personal in the Early United States”

• Dickerson-Pells, Makhai, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, “Braided Justice in the Dawn Lands: Black Reparations and Indigenous Land Back in Southern New England, 1960-2026”

• Dinnie, Sam, Ph.D. Candidate, George Washington University, “‘This Convulsed Commonwealth’: Western Massachusetts Women in Protest and Dissent, 1734–1787”

• Duggan, Marie Christine, Professor Emeritus, Keene State College of the University System of New Hampshire, “New Englanders and New Spaniards: Elusive Trust in the Age of Revolutions”

• Eisenstein, Lea, Ph.D. Candidate, Princeton University, “Coming Out: The Private and Public History of Hysterectomy in America”

• Gasha, Anna, Adjunct, Columbia University, “Hurricanes and Floods in New England: Loss, Recovery, and Preparation of the Built Environment”

• Jackson, Holly, Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston, “No Half Measures: Radical Non-Resistance and the Theory of Abolition”

• Jon, Ihnmi, Assistant Professor, Tufts University, “Mind the Archival Gap: The ‘Hermit Nation’ at a Crossroads (1876-1910)”

• McLaren, Aidan, Ph.D. Student, University at Albany, “Empires in Glass: Greenhouses and Controlling Climates in the Atlantic World, 1607-1815”

• Rojas, Heath, Ph.D. Candidate, Columbia University, “Written in the Heart: Sentimental Deism in the Enlightenment and the Age of Revolutions”

• Sedzielarz, Aleksander, Assistant Professor, Kean University, “Making a Move: Diversion, Dialogue, Desire, and Empire in Games and Sport in the US and Asia-Pacific (1834-1959)”

New England Regional Fellowship Consortium Fellows not visiting the MHS

• Aboelela, Ayah, Ph.D. Candidate, Northeastern University, “The Late Ottoman Hajj between Medina and Jerusalem”

• ardan, dee(dee), Independent Scholar, “(M)other Tongues, Monstrous Tongues: Feminist Psychoanalysis and Race”

• Bianco , Allison, Independent Scholar, “38 Going on 90: A Print Series of The Great New England Hurricane”

• Carabatsos, Julia, Ph.D. Candidate, Columbia University, “Album Logic: Assembling and Arranging America in Nineteenth-Century Art”

• D’Urso, Carina, Ph.D. Student, Boston College, “Picturing America: Civic and Communal Life at the Children’s Art Centre”

• Flinchbaugh, Anna, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Southern California, “Replication, Repetition, and Historical Revisionism: Art Needlework in the United States and United Kingdom”

• Forsyth, Ari, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Washington, “A History of Jewish Social Work in the United States, 1880-1940”

• Gardner, Martha, Associate Professor, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, “Rights and Risks: Why American Women Kept Smoking even as Men Began to Quit, 1960s-1990s”

• Haruna, Halima, Ph.D. Student, Northeastern University, “An Intellectual History of Black Women’s Disability Politics, 1870s -1900s”

• Ombadykow, Dolma, Ph.D. Candidate, Yale University “The Human and its Borders after Biology: Twentieth Century Maintenance of Life, Livability, and Labor, 1900–1961”

• Pack, Caroline, Independent Scholar, “From the Home to the Hospital: The Making of Death Care in Late 19th Century New England”

• Rosen, Joshua, Ph.D. Candidate, Boston College, “City of Tenants: Rental Housing in Late 20th Century Boston”
  
• Scouller, Wulfstan, Ph.D. Candidate, Yale University, “Enterprizing War: How Merchants Shaped King Philip’s War”

• Turner, KT, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Idaho, “Claiming Space: The Emancipatory Power of African American Theatre During Reconstruction to 1900”