The Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies has awarded thirteen fellowships for 2024-25. Recipients will join faculty and graduate students from U-M History and other institutions for a series of lectures, workshops, and symposia. Learn more about the research plans of next year's cohort below.

These fellows join more than 200 others who have earned Eisenberg fellowships since the institute’s inception in 2006. The institute announces its annual fellowship program in December and issues the awards in spring. The faculty and graduate student award terms are July 1 to June 30; the postdoctoral award term is September 1 to August 31; external faculty award terms vary. These awards have been made possible by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.

2024-25 Faculty Fellowship

Jennifer Dominique Jones
Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Michigan

During her fellowship, Professor Jones will work on two book manuscripts: "The (In)Visible Acquisitions of Ann Allen Shockley," a biography of a Black lesbian feminist writer/archivist, and "Circuits of Intimacy: Networks of Sociality and Care in Black Michigan Communities, 1916-1976," a queer history of Black Michigan communal life.

David Tamayo
Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Michigan

During his Eisenberg fellowship, Professor Tamayo will finish a book on middle-class conservatism in post-revolutionary Mexico. The project examines the influence of American service clubs, particularly Rotary and Lions International, which after the 1920s attracted middle-class Mexicans who opposed the politics of the Revolutionary government. The book uncovers a uniquely Mexican middle-class political activism through supposedly non-political and secular charitable organizations throughout most of the twentieth century.

2024-25 Residency Research Fellowship

Cheryl X. Dong
Assistant Professor, Department of History, Bowling Green State University

Professor Dong is currently working on a second book manuscript tentatively entitled, "The World on Fire: Forging Black Power Internationalism in the Vietnam War.” She hopes to use her fellowship to begin archival research for this project, researching in the University of Michigan’s ample collections on Black radicalism and New Left movements.

Joseph W. Ho
Associate Professor, Department of History, Albion College

During his fellowship, Professor Ho will be working on his new monograph, Bamboo Wireless: Mediating the Cold War in Asia, which explores how vernacular media created by Chinese refugee groups in diaspora and American expatriates expelled from mainland China profoundly shaped transnational representations of the Cold War.

Gregory Smith
Associate Professor, Department of History, World Languages, and Cultures, Central Michigan University

Professor Smith's research project is a book entitled, "Body, Soul, and Spirits in the Roman World: An Attenuated History." He will use his research leave and fellowship to finish the book while expanding its attention to ancient Greek sources as they relate to ideas about body, soul, demons, and the stars.

2024-25 Postdoctoral Fellowship

Sikandar M. Kumar
PhD Candidate, History, University of Michigan

As Postdoctoral Fellow, Kumar will prepare his first book manuscript based on his PhD dissertation, tentatively titled, “The Democratic Commons: Vernacular Genealogies of Political Modernity in North India.” He is currently revising an article on the use of the concept of “commonalization” in late-colonial literature, and the ideological construction of “feudalism.” In 2024-25, Kumar will teach courses on “Empires and Nations in South Asia,” and “The Rise and Fall of the British Empire.”

2024-25 Graduate Student Research Fellowship

Albert Cavallaro
PhD Candidate, History, University of Michigan

Following two years in Uzbekistan, Cavallaro will work on two dissertation chapters during this fellowship. The first investigates how an insurrection against Russian colonial rule impacted museum policy and outreach. The second examines how finds of old coins led village and city residents to dig, donate, and, at times, murder.

Felipe Coimbra Moretti
PhD Student, Anthropology and History, University of Michigan

Coimbra Moretti's current research asks: how have long trends in the global economy shaped territory in so-called peripheral countries? How does capitalist development and ruin form a landscape? During his time as an Eisenberg graduate fellow, he will be conducting archival and field research in the port city of Fortaleza, Ceará, and the hinterlands of the state, hoping to create and strengthen connections with interlocutors that will be crucial to longer fieldwork stays after his preliminary exams.

Dora Gao
PhD Candidate, Ancient History, University of Michigan

During the fellowship period, Gao will draft their chapter studying codes of relationality in the Demotic regulations of religious associations. They will also begin work on a second chapter focused on a Greek text uniting scribes, farmers, and the land of Egypt against the extractive taxation of the Ptolemies.

Sierra Jones
PhD Candidate, Ancient History, University of Michigan

During her fellowship, Jones will continue her dissertation research and hopes to develop a framework for explaining how knowledge systems traveled, adapted, and transformed across ancient Mediterranean cultures. Her analysis will draw from the fields of religious studies, cognitive sciences, and cultural studies.

Israa Khalifa
PhD Student, Anthropology and History, University of Michigan

As an Eisenberg Institute fellow, Khalifa will draw on preliminary fieldwork, as well as research in British, Dutch, and UAE archives, to prepare her dissertation prospectus. She will also continue working on Abu Shadi’s papers to explore themes related to home and exile.

Irene Mora
PhD Candidate, History and Women's and Gender Studies, University of Michigan

During her fellowship year at the Eisenberg Institute, Mora will continue work on her dissertation and plans to edit one of her chapters and submit it to an academic journal. She looks forward to collaborating with the Eisenberg fellows cohort and helping to lead Eisenberg events.

2024-25 Graduate Student Liaison

Paige Newhouse
PhD Candidate, History, University of Michigan

As an Eisenberg Institute fellow, Newhouse will continue drafting her dissertation. She will work on a chapter about Cold War refugees and Vietnamese asylum seekers in West Germany in the late 1970s. This chapter will explore how West Germans imagined political asylum and who could receive it, contextualizing debates around asylum that reappeared in the immediate post-1989 period.