Laura Lewis, PhD ’22, works with chimpanzees and bonobos in zoos and sanctuaries worldwide to study how they interact with their social environments. By tracking eye-movement—an innovative and non-invasive method of study—she explores the ways in which primates attend to one another.

Sydney Stotter, who graduated from GSAS last May with a master’s degree in regional studies, looks at historical memory politics in Russia. Her thesis, “Childhood Under Siege: The Evolution of World War II Education in Russian Memory Politics,” focuses on the way that politicians try to form narratives about history for their own political purposes.

2022 GSAS graduate Nikhita Obeegadoo explores the way that contemporary authors often present the perspectives of oppressed and exploited migrants through the lens of oceanic ecology and materiality.

Yipeng Zhou, who will graduate this month with an MA in regional studies from Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) says that the history of Xinjiang, China’s northwestern borderland in Central Asia, provides a lens for examining the evolving political and academic relationship between Russia and China.

In her doctoral dissertation, “Imagined Histories: Hellenistic Libraries and the Idea of Greece,” recent graduate Alexandra Schultz pushes back against the longstanding narrative of Hellenistic libraries as established, maintained, and used solely by wealthy, “great men.” In doing so, she hopes to shake up the way that scholars look at the history of knowledge.

As a postdoctoral researcher at the Mongan Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital , McDowell, PhD ’20, works to uncover the inequities that affect the health of those in the LGBTQ community—especially those who identify as TGD.

Graduating student Henry Stoll’s PhD dissertation, “The Unsung Revolution: The Music of Haitian Independence, 1804–1820,” argues that much of early Haitian music followed French traditions, highlighting the difference between European Enlightenment ideals and the real-world treatment of colonies.

As a PhD student in German language and literature at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Rebecca Stewart explores the art and thought of Friedrich Schiller with fresh eyes, finding in his work a trenchant critique of power and a championing of the marginalized.

Student Heidi Pickard seeks to uncover the prevalence of toxic chemicals in surface waterways—and their impact on the environment and human health.

The island of Guam is often seen as important only in the context of its ties to the US, which annexed the island as a territory following the Spanish-American War and now uses it to host a military base. But recent graduate Kristin Oberiano’s dissertation, “Territorial Discontent: Chamorros, Filipinos, and the Making of the United States Empire on Guam,” centers Chamorros, the indigenous people of Guam, and Filipinos in the historical narrative.