Robert Diaz

Robert Diaz is a doctoral candidate whose research focuses on the intersections of U.S. and Pacific World histories; the history of science, medicine, and technology; and childhood history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His dissertation explores two separate, yet related, matters integral to U.S. imperialism in the early twentieth century: 1.) The influence of scientific discourses of childhood and, by extension, lifecycle development on American colonial policy in the Philippines and 2.) The ways that youths in the Philippines interpreted and played active roles in the American colonial project—reifying, destabilizing, shirking, or otherwise searching for interpersonal meaning within it. 

Robert earned his B.A.s in political science and history and his M.A. in history from the University of Texas at El Paso. In 2018, he was the youngest president elected to the board of the El Paso County Historical Society, a nonprofit archive and education center founded in 1954. Between 2019 and 2020, he served the Student Conservation Association/Americorps at Chamizal National Memorial in El Paso. He was the 2022-2023 Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies (EIHS) Graduate Student Liaison and an EIHS Graduate Student Research Fellow during the 2021-2022 academic year. Between 2021 and 2023, he was also a Graduate Student Research Assistant with ReConnect/ReCollect: Reparative Connections to Philippines Collections at the University of Michigan.

Fields of Study

• U.S. in the World
• Pacific World
• Science and Technology in Society

Courses Taught

Graduate Student Instructor

• FA 2021 History of the U.S. West
• WN 2022 Minds and Brains in America
• FA 2022 The United States in the World
• WN 2023 Epidemics!