News

Dr. Michele Stephens supports students in Bolvia and Peru

Aaron Hollis, a Public History MA student, speaks about his summer internship. 

Kara Gordon, second-year Public History MA, has always found historic textiles to bring more meaning and authenticity to history.

PhD student Nerissa Aksamit has spent this summer at the Goethe-Institut in Hamburg studying the German language. This experience was funded through a scholarship from Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). Nerissa was granted a DAAD scholarship last summer as well, but had to turn it down to participate in the Global Humanitarian Research Academy at the University of Exeter and International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.

This summer, Public History M.A. Steven Semmel was hired as a seasonal park ranger at Harpers Ferry through the Pathways program. Steven works in the living history department, which conducts their programming wearing nineteenth century clothing.

The History Department is pleased to honor Dr. Anne Kisaka Nangulu with the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences’ 2017 Outstanding Alumni Award for History.  Dr. Nangulu is a Professor of History in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya. The History Department has had a long and successful relationship with Kenya, and especially with Moi University. The Department’s strong ties with Kenya have largely been through the efforts of Dr. Nangulu’s PhD supervisor, Professor Robert Maxon, who over the past thirty years has worked with many Kenyan students who have come to WVU to study under him.  In all, Professor Maxon has produced twenty-five PhDs in African history, and half of them have been from Kenya. Dr. Nangulu was one of first group of Kenyan students to complete their PhD with Professor Maxon. It is fair to say that she is one of the most accomplished and successful of the Department’s PhD alumni, not only for Kenya, but for the program as a whole. Many of her students have subsequently gone on to study and complete their PhD graduate work at WVU. In fact, today, nearly half of the History faculty at Moi University, have earned their PhD from WVU. It is like a small extension of WVU, thousands of miles away, in East Africa! Thus, in honoring Dr. Nangulu, we are also honoring what is a very special relationship between WVU and Kenya.

Our students and former students have been busy this year! Check out some of the exciting accomplishments of our current undergraduate and graduate students and catch up on the news from our amazing alumni:

It’s always great to hear from our alumni and what they are doing with their history degrees! Catch up on some news from our former students:

Dr. Katherine Aaslestad, received a prestigious J. William Fulbright Research Award to Germany. Dr. Aaslestad’s Fulbright Flex Award will support three research trips to Germany in 2016, 2017 and 2018 to undertake research on her book project, “After the Wars:  German Central Europe after Napoleonic Conquest, 1815-1848.”

Our department aims to foster research opportunities for everyone, including Undergraduate History Majors. To this end, we developed the Undergraduate Research Skills Program in order to encourage and foster innovative research among our Undergraduate students.