From the Desk of Kevin Jones |
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Greetings, alumni, friends, and fans of history! This has been an exciting and fruitful year in the history department. Our faculty continue to produce innovative new scholarship, which help our students excel in and out of the classroom. We owe a great debt of gratitude to our donors and alumni for their generous support and enduring interest in seeing the department thrive.
In 2025, the history department added five full-time faculty members. Elizabeth Shermer joins us as professor of U.S. history and the inaugural director of our applied history certificate program. |
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Prashant Kumar joins as assistant professor, with an emphasis on the history of science and technology. Amna Qayyum joins the department as assistant professor with an emphasis on the history of medicine and gender. Danielle Raad is our third new assistant professor, with an emphasis on museum studies. Finally, Emily Smith
joins as our new lecturer in U.S. history. We are thrilled to welcome so many new faces to the department, a testament to robust student interest and administrative support to advance historical thinking and understanding. Last year, we announced the success of the campaign to honor beloved retired professor John Inscoe with an endowed professorship. We are delighted to announce we are searching for a distinguished historian to fill the newly endowed John Inscoe Chair in Southern History.
We continue to place students in paid internships. From the Hargrett Library Fellowship and the UGA Press Internship on campus to the W. Todd Groce Fellowship at the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah and the annual summer internship at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, our graduate students gained critical work experience in a variety of public history arenas. Generous donor funding allowed us to grant dozens of travel awards to our graduate students, enabling them to conduct archival research across the country.
On the undergraduate side, we oversaw the placement of our first Jeff and Doris Muir History Internship, as Mattie Pickard completed a successful summer internship with the global law firm DLA Piper in Washington, DC. We are so grateful to the generosity of our alumni, Jeff and Doris Muir, for making this incredible opportunity possible!
Each year, the department of history supports students who need financial assistance to participate in study away programs and conduct research, including those traveling to regional archives to research their senior theses. If you would like to support our students, consider donating to the History Undergraduate Student Support Fund. Your gift, no matter the size, opens doors for history students.
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Kevin Jones Department Head |
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Announcing the inaugural Morrow Lecture Series in African American History and War & Society |
The history department is launching the endowed Morrow Lecture Series in African American History and War and Society, beginning Jan. 20, with a Black History Month keynote by Matthew F. Delmont on his acclaimed book Half American. Read more. |
| Pictured: Matthew Delmont |
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Double Dawg Morgan Geiser Inspires Students Through History |
Since earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UGA in 2021, history alum Morgan Geiser credits the department’s faculty with shaping his academic growth and love of research. One of his favorite memories was conducting research at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris as an undergraduate - an opportunity he says he couldn’t find anywhere else. Geiser has spent five years teaching history at the middle- and high-school levels. Read more.
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Our alumni continue to go above and beyond in the field of history. From university awards to new publications and speaking engagements, they are proof that the history department produces professionals that are ambitious, curious, and creative. Highlights include:
Mike Barry (AB ’10), senior counsel for Nissan North America, was named a 2025 UGA #40under40 honoree — a program that celebrates young alumni leading the pack in their industries and communities. Read more.
Marvin T. Chiles (PhD ’20) has a new book, Playing for Power: Black Resistance in Amateur Basketball and Football in Jim Crow Virginia (June 2025, University of Alabama Press).
Ashton Ellett (PhD ’17, Master’s ’10) was appointed director of the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies and will also oversee the Georgia Capitol Museum in Atlanta. Read more.
Peggy Galis (AB ’68) received Franklin’s 2025 Alumni Award in College Service for her commitment to the College and her impact on campus and beyond. Read more.
Lesley Gordon (PhD ’95) recently gave a fascinating guest lecture and visited Dr. Berry’s Civil War class to discuss her new book, Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War (November 2024, Cambridge University Press).
William Kelson (PhD ’24) received the Ron and Yvette Walcott Excellence in Fine Arts and Humanities Doctoral Research Award and was honored at the annual Graduate School Honors Luncheon as a part of UGA Honors Week.
Katherine E. Rohrer (PhD ’15) has a new book, Daughters of Divinity: Evangelical Protestant Christianity and the Making of a New Southern Woman, 1830-1930. |
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Meet our new history student ambassadors |
Annually, we select student ambassadors to help promote the study of history and the history department by participating in and assisting with departmental events, recruitment efforts, social media campaigns, and alumni and donor outreach. Read more about this year’s four student ambassadors here. |
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| Grace Fellowship Recipient Brings History to Life |
History PhD student Alex Bowen was awarded the W. Todd Groce Fellowship after spending the summer in Savannah digitizing newspapers and preserving microfilm for the nation’s upcoming 250th anniversary. He also earned the Jane Mulkey and Rufus King Green Graduate Fellowship for the second time, recognizing his leadership and academic excellence. Read more about Bowen’s digitization. Read more about his Fellowship.
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H. Christian Choe (MA '21), a PhD candidate, has been selected to receive a 2025 Gilder Lehrman Scholarly Fellowship by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History to support his doctoral dissertation research. |
| Pictured: H. Christian Choe |
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Pictured: Libia Jiménez Chávez |
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UGA Press Acquisitions Fellow Libia Jiménez Chávez was awarded the 2025–26 George Hugh Boyd Memorial Scholarship for her academic excellence and research. She co‑authored a chapter in Community College and Beyond, winner of the 2025 AAHHE Book of the Year Award, and received Georgia State University’s Reed Fink Award in Southern Labor History to support her archival work.
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Lyn Hemmingway has been awarded a Chase Family Travel Grant for 2025 from the University of Florida's George Smather's Library in support of his dissertation research.
Benjamin Roy has a feature article in the May issue of The Public Historian. "A Spatiotemporal Examination of Confederate Monuments in the Former Confederacy" looks at "...Confederate monuments, statues, and plaques in the eleven states of the former Confederacy based on the Southern Poverty Law Center's ‘Whose Heritage’ data." Read the article here.
Public historian and Ph.D. student W. Cole Wicker was quoted in “North Carolina’s Deadliest Industrial Accident, 100 Years On,” reflecting on the state’s forgotten mining history. He also serves as executive director of the Heart of Deep River Historical Society. |
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| Grace Fellowship Recipient Brings History to Life |
Grace Wilson, an honors student at UGA, truly demonstrates the power of the “&” in arts and sciences. With dual majors in art history and history, minors in classical culture and chemistry, and a certificate in museum studies, she embraces every opportunity to connect disciplines to enhance her skills and career potential.
“Studying history is a core part of my program at UGA,” she said. “My course of study focuses on many different subjects, but my history major provides the foundation for all my other subjects.” Read more about Grace here. |
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Triple Major, Global Experience, Future Officer |
Christian Poe, a senior at UGA, is triple majoring in history, international affairs, and Spanish with a minor in aerospace studies. An Air Force ROTC cadet and Georgia Commitment Scholars Executive Board member, he studied abroad in Spain last summer and will continue his history studies abroad this year. After graduating in 2026, he will commission into the U.S. Air Force as a public affairs officer before pursuing law school. Poe is another example of students designing their own paths forward and tapping into the power of the “&”. Read more about Christian here.
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| UGA Welcomes Osborne Fellow Focused on Oral Histories |
Doctoral student Erleen Ellis joined UGA’s graduate program this year as an Osborne Graduate Fellow, working with Cindy Hahamovitch to explore labor organizing and social mobilization among Black and Brown women in the South while expanding her oral history research. Read more. |
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Celebrating our newest alumni |
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Master of Arts Hannah Hamrick David Harris Taylor Howard Shayla Manwill Maya Peters-Greno Danielle Towers Justin Wright | |
Doctorate of Philosophy Bryant Barnes Tracy Barnett Maya Brooks Robert Ferguson Steven G. Krug Theodora“Tedi” Light Louise I. Milone Margaret Neel Terrell Orr |
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Like our students, the department’s faculty continued its legacy of excellence in 2025. Faculty members from across the department are publishing new work and receiving accolades for the important research they complete while at UGA. Highlights from this year include: Cindy Hahamovitch was awarded fellowship support by the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies for her research “That Same Old Snake: Slaves, Coolies, Guest Workers, and the Global History of Human Trafficking.”
Tracey Johnson has been selected as one of just nine 2025 UGA Special Collections Faculty Teaching Fellows.
Joseph Kellner is the recipient of the Michael F. Adams Early Career Scholar Award, established by the UGA Research Foundation and his new book, The Spirit of Socialism: Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse (Cornell University Press, June 2025), explores the radical spiritual movements and worldviews that flourished in Soviet cities as the USSR unraveled.
Akela Reason’s new book Politics and Memory: Civil War Monuments in Gilded Age New York (June 2025, Yale University Press), examines the complex politics that shaped New York's Civil War soldiers' monuments.
Steve Soper received the 2025 Sandy Beaver Excellence in Teaching Award. Timothy Yang has been awarded a Creative Research Medal for 2025. |
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Jan. 20, 2026 • 5 p.m. • Room 221, LeConte Hall
Morrow Lecture Series in African American History and War & Society
Matthew F. Delmont, speaking on his acclaimed book Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad (Viking, 2022). Read more. Feb. 20, 2026 • 5 p.m. • Conservatory Great Room, State Botanical Garden of Georgia
Franklin College of Arts and Sciences Alumni Awards and Donor Celebration
Join Dean Anna Stenport for an exclusive evening honoring alumni excellence and the generosity of donors to the college. More info. |
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For the 10th consecutive year, UGA has placed in the top 20 among the nation’s best public universities, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2026 rankings. UGA shares the No. 19 rank with Purdue University. Read more. |
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