Recent Ph.D.s and Placements
Summer 2023
Anthony Gaspar
Dissertation: “Prey of All Nations”: Diplomacy and Empire During the Reign of Michael VIII Palaiologos (1259–1282)
Placement: Adjunct Instructor, College of Charleston, Charleston SC
Jorge Puma Crespo
Dissertation: “The Only Correct Line”: A Transnational History of French Maoism in Catholic Mexico During the Late Sixties
Placement: Assistant Professor of History, Hope College, Holland MI
Ana Sánchez Ramírez
Dissertation: Violentology: Expert Knowledge and Government Peacebuilding in Late 20th Century Colombia
Placement: Docente de Cátedra, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia
Emily Smith
Dissertation: Sanctifying Pregnancy: Motherhood and American Catholicism, 1930–1981
Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion, Wabash College, Crawfordsville IN
Tomás Valle
Dissertation: Socratic Learning in Lutheran Germany: Philosophy, Religion, and Politics in the Life of Johannes Caselius (1533–1613)
Placement: Postdoctoral scholar, University of Hamburg, Germany
Spring 2023
Janice Gunther Martin
Dissertation: Unburdening the Beasts: The Equine Doctors of Early Modern Castile
Noe Pliego Campos
Dissertation: Crises, Rights, and Futurity: Youth in 1980s Mexico City
Placement: Assistant Professor of History, Wabash College, Crawfordsville IN
Istvan Szepesi
Dissertation: Unspoken Accommodations: A Century of Religious Coexistence in CatholicCologne, 1517–1617
Placement: Notre Dame 5+1 postdoctoral fellowship
Summer 2022
Susanna DeStradis
Dissertation: Making Democracy Safe for Religion: The Catholic Argument for the “Nation Under God” (1939–1965)
Placement: Postdoctoral Fellowship, John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University, St. Louis MO; Assistant Professor of History, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State MS
Ian Van Dyke
Dissertation: Evangelical Multiculturalism in the Age of Fracture: U.S. Missionaries and Evangelicals’ Search for Diversity and Social Justice, 1974–2010
Placement: Visiting Professor of History, Grand Valley State University, Allendale MI
James P. Breen
Dissertation: Fighting the Roman Corporation: How the American Protective Association Combined Anti-Catholicism and Antimonopolism in Gilded Age America
Placement: Part-Time Lecturer, Social and Historical Studies, University of Washington, Tacoma WA
Spring 2022
Jessica Brockmole
Dissertation: Pink Cars and Pocketbooks: How American Women Bought Their Way into the Driver’s Seat
Placement: Independent Writer
Raymond Drause
Dissertation: “In Word and Deed”: Exiled Siberian Decembrists as Servants of the Russian Empire, 1826–1860
Placement: Visiting Researcher, Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland
Fall 2021
Esteban Alfaro Salas
Dissertation: Making Portuguese Colonial Governance: Slavery, Forced Labor, and Racial Ideology in the Interior from Benguela, 1760-1860
Placement: Lecturer (equivalent to assistant professor) in African History, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Anna Holdorf
Dissertation: A Harvest for Heaven and Earth: Agricultural Missionaries and the Religious Roots of U.S. International Development in Latin America
Placement: Rating Veterans Service Representative, U.S. Veterans Benefits Administration, Milwaukee WI
Nelia Martsinkiv
Dissertation: Unlikely Dissenters: Origins and Development of the Ukrainian Human Rights Movement from Khrushchev to Gorbachev
Summer 2021
Anna Fett
Dissertation: Peace Education for the World: People-to-People Programs, American Youth, & U.S. Power, 1939-1961
Placement: Assistant Professor of Peace Studies and Black Studies, University of Missouri, Columbia MO
Sejoo Kim
Dissertation: American Postcolony: Imperial Citizenship and the Rise of Garment Metropolis in the Pacific, 1944-1999
Placement: Assistant Professor, Faculty of Social Studies Education, Gyeongin National University of Education, Incheon, South Korea
Spring 2021
Nicholas Roberts
Dissertation: A Sea of Wealth: Sayyid Saʿid bin Sultan, His Omani Empire, and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace
Placement: Assistant Professor of Middle East and Islamic World History, Norwich University, Northfield VT
Fall 2020
Bry Martin
Dissertation: Court Dusk, Country Dawn: The Ideological Formation of the First Earl of Shaftesbury
Placement: Attorney at law, Dover-Foxcroft ME
Chris Temple
Dissertation: Fostering Elite Science at an American Catholic University: The Rise of a Research Culture at the University of Notre Dame, 1842-1967
Placement: Academic Support Program Director, Center for University Advising, University of Notre Dame
Summer 2020
Andrea Castonguay
Dissertation: "Have you a clear Authority?" Dynasties, da'was, and the rise of Islamic States in Medieval Morocco
Placement: Assistant Professor of Ancient History, Western New England University, Springfield MA
Ashley Foster
Dissertation: Scotland’s Age of Reckoning: British Union and Enlightenment on a Covenanted People
Placement: Education Administrator, Honors College Dean's Office, University of Alabama, Birmingham AL
Spring 2020
Eve Wolynes
Dissertation: Migrant Mentalities: Reconstructing the Community Identity and World of Venetian Merchants in the Late Medieval Mediterranean
Placement: Librarian, University of Dayton, Dayton OH
Philip Byers
Dissertation: How Firm the Foundation: The Lilly Endowment and American Christianity, 1937-1989
Placement: Halbrook Chair of Civic Engagement, Taylor University, Upland IN
Carla Villanueva
Dissertation: The Politics of Repressive Education Reform: The Institutional Relationship between the Secretaría de Educación Pública and Escuelas Normales Rurales in Mexico During the Cold War
Placement:Union Organizer, United Auto Workers
Anna Vincenzi
Dissertation: Imagining an Age of Revolution? Interpretations of the American Revolution in the Italian States, 1765-1799
Placement: Assistant Professor in Modern European History, Hillsdale College
John Nelson
Dissertation: The Geography to Command a Continent: Native Peoples, Europeans, and the Chicago Portage
Placement: Assistant Professor in Early American History, Texas Tech University
Nicholas Bonneau
Dissertation: Unspeakable Loss: New England's Invisible Throat Distemper Epidemics, 1735-1775
Placement: Full-Time Lecturer in the History of Science and Public Health, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Consulting Scholar, Mütter Research Institute, College of Physicians of Philadelphia
Fall 2019
Jillian Plummer
Dissertation: Saving Latin America: Catholic Sisters, Communism, and Liberation theology, 1946-1985
Placement: Assistant Professor of Catholic Studies, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield CT
Natalie Sargent
Dissertation: Peculiar Positions of Power: Laywomen as "Good Americans" and "Good Catholics," 1854-1907
Placement: Faculty Award Program Director, Provost Office, University of Notre Dame
Summer 2019
Suzanna Krivulskaya
Dissertation: Disgraced: How Sex Scandals Transformed American Protestantism, 1832-1988
Placement: Assistant Professor of History, California State University San Marcos
Danae Jacobson
Dissertation: Spiritual Geographies: How Nuns Changed the U.S. West
Placement: Assistant Professor of History, Colby College, Waterville ME
Taras Karaulshchikov
Dissertation: A History of Georgian Scientific Intelligentsia: The Case of the Nikoladze Family 1860-1981
Christopher Flanagan
Dissertation: Empire Remade: Refining Empire in the American Revolution, 1774-1795
Placement: Postdoctoral Scholarship, University of Notre Dame (5+1, 2019-2020)
Dylan LeBlanc
Dissertation: The Empire in Chains: British ‘Government Men’ in the Atlantic Slave Trade
Placement: Social Science teacher, Oak Lawn Community High School, Oak Lawn IL
Andrew Mach
Dissertation: Claiming America: Irish Catholic Memory and the Nation, 1865-1925
Placement: Coordinator for Advising Operations, Newnan Academic Advising Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Spring 2019
Jonathan Riddle
Dissertation: Prospering Body and Soul: Health Reform, Religion, and Capitalism in Antebellum America
Placement: Assistant Professor of History, Seaver College, Pepperdine University, Malibu CA
Heather Stanfiel
Dissertation: Imperial Heritage: Empire and Commemoration in Pre-Independence Ireland
Aurelio Valarezo-Dueñas
Dissertation: Para el bien universal y quietud de esta república y provincia: Political Culture, Representation and Policy Making in Seventeenth-Century Northern Andes
Fall 2018
Elizabeth Baker
Dissertation: 'More Romance than Reality': Mary Carpenter, 'Native Gentlemen,' and Female Education Reform in India
Placement: Assistant Professor of Modern European History, Grove City College, Grove City PA
Jessica Fisher
Dissertation: The Rise and Fall of the Ribbonmen: Ribbonism in Ireland and Abroad, c. 1810-1858
Garrett Fontenot
Dissertation: Voluntarism and Imperial Supremacy: Politics and the Military Establishment in the Expansion of the British Empire in French North America, 1760-1775
Placement: Manager of Fellowships and Honorific Scholarships, Ogden Honors College, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge LA
Yin Liu
Dissertation: Teaching the Secunda Lex: Deuteronomy and Church Reform at Lyon in the Age of Charlemagne
Placement: Faculty Member, School of History, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
John Shanley
Dissertation: Catholic Freedom, Protestant Slavery? Reconsidering Anti-Catholicism in Maryland, 1688-1776
Kathryn Vidrine
Dissertation: Belief in Power: Building a National Church of Ireland, 1660-1689
Placement: Assistant Director of Doctoral Studies, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame
Summer 2018
Maria Cecilia Ulrickson
Dissertation: 'Esclavos que fueron' in Santo Domingo, 1768-1844
Placement: Assistant Professor of American Church History, Catholic University of America, Washington DC
Spring 2018
Jairo Campuzano Hoyos
Dissertation: The Quest for Material Progress in Global Perspective: Colombia 1840s-1900s
Placement: Profesor Titular, Eafit University, Medellin, Colombia
Bethany Montagano
Dissertation: Sites of Slavery: Gender, Race and Tourism in the Construction of America's Slavery Memory
Placement: Director of University of Southern California Museums, Los Angeles CA
Felicia Moralez
Dissertation: From Immigrants to Citizens: Mexicans and Settlement Houses in Gary, Indiana, 1919-1965
David Morris
Dissertation: Apocalypse Now or Later: The Manuscript Tradition of the Super Prophetas (Super Essaiam) of Pseudo-Joachim of Fiore
Placement: Director of the Souvay Memorial Library at Kenrick Glennon Seminary, St. Louis MO
James Strasburg
Dissertation: God's Marshall Plan: American Protestantism and the Democratization of Germany, 1910-1963
Placement: Associate Professor of History, Hillsdale College MI
Alexander Wimberly
Dissertation: Present Witness: The Confession of 1967 and the Travails of Presbyterians in American Society
Placement: Leader of the Corrymeela Community (Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organization), Belfast, Northern Ireland