Graduate Careers & Outcomes

Our PhD graduates go on to do amazing things. From tenure-track positions in research universities to teaching in the secondary education system, working in communications to public service, our alumni have found positions where the expertise and skills of a history PhD are invaluable.

Placement Data from the Office of Graduate Studies

For more detailed information about what our alumni are up to now visit the Graduate School's career outcomes page.

Career Outcome Data

Placements and Accomplishments of Recent Graduates

2022

Xin Yu

Visiting Assistant Professor in History of China
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI

Nan-Hsu Chen

Hou Family Post-Doctoral Fellow in Taiwan Studies
Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University, Boston, MA

2021

Mary Andino

Managing Editor
Feast Magazine, St. Louis, MO

Dissertation:  "The Pursuit of Holiness in Early Modern Southern Italy"

2020

Adwoa Opong

Assistant Professor, Department of History
Chapman University, Irvine, CA


Dissertation:  "All That Is Meant By Citizenship: Women, Social Work and Development in Ghana, 1945-1970s"


Brandon Wilson

Postdoctoral Fellowship
University of Kentucky, Louisville, KY

Dissertation: "Safekeeping: Slavery, Capitalism, and the Carceral State in Washington, D.C., 1830-1863"

2019

Taylor Desloge

Visiting Assistant Professor
Connecticut College, New London, CT

Dissertation:  "The Tortured Pre-History of Urban Blight:  African American St. Louis and the Politics of Public Health, 1877-1940"


Boyi Chen

Associate Professor of History
Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

Dissertation:  "Beyond the Land Sea:  Diasporic South Fujianese in Hội An, Batavia, and Manila, 1550-1850"


Gilbert Chen

Assistant Professor of History
Towson University, Towson, MD

Dissertation:  "Living in This World:  A Social History of Buddhist Monks and Nuns in the Nineteenth-Century Western China"

Waseem Bin-Kasim

Assistant Professor of History
Elon University, Elon, NC


Dissertation:  "Sanitary Segregation:  Cleansing Accra and Nairobi, 1908-1963"

Joohee Suh

Assistant Professor of History
Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH

Dissertation:  "The Afterlife of Corpses:  A Social History of Unburied Bodies in Qing China (1644-1911)"

Weicong Duan

Multi-year postdoc that will convert into associate professorship
Nankai University, Nankai, China


Dissertation:  "Ming China As a Gunpower Empire:  Military Technology, Politics, and Fiscal Administration, 1350-1620"


Luca Foti

Scirocco Wine Imports, Founder
Pleasant Hill, IA


Dissertation:  “Heretical Communes: The Struggle for Authority in the Fourteenth-Century Papal Territories”

Sarah Siegel


Director of Strategic Research and Data Analysis
Colorado Education Association, Denver, CO


Dissertation: “By the People Most Affected” : Model Cities, Citizen Control, and the Broken Promises of  Urban Renewal

2018

Tiffany Player

Assistant Professor of History
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Carbondale, IL
with a joint appointment in the Global Scholars/Study Abroad program


Dissertation: ““What Are We Going to Do For Ourselves?:” African American Women and the Politics of Slavery from the Antebellum Era to the Great Depression"

2017

Lisa Lillie

Assistant Professor of History
Director, Department of History
Co-Director, Pre-Law Program
Co-Director, Women and Gender Studies
Maryville University, St. Louis, MO
with a joint appointment in the Global Scholars/Study Abroad program

Dissertation: "Empire, Community, Nation: the English Merchants of Livorno, Italy and the Sociability of Commerce in Early Modernity"

Amanda L. Scott 

Assistant Professor of History
Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA

Dissertation:  "The Basque Seroras:  Local Religion, Gender, and Power in Northern Iberia, 1550-1800"

2016

Jacob Labendz 

Clayman Assistant Professor of Judaic and Holocaust Studies
Director of the Center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies
Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH

Dissertation: "Re-Negotiating Czechoslovakia: The State and the Jews in Communist Central Europe. The Czech Lands, 1945-1990"   

Dale Kretz

Assistant Professor of African American History
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX

Dissertation: "State of Health: African-American Laboring Health and the Politics of Reparations in the Age of Emancipation, 1830-1900"

Bianca Lopez

W. R. Nicholson Endowed Assistant Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX

Dissertation: “The Lands of the Virgin: Sacred Economies and Local Identities in the March of Ancona, 1348-1453”

2015

Sara T. Jay

Lecturer in Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies
Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Dissertation “Falafel, Raï, and Bijoux: Cultural Exchange and the Formation of a Transnational Algerian Jewish Community, 1950-1970”

James Palmer

Assistant Professor of History
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL

Dissertation: "Gold, Grain and Grace: Piety and Community in Late Medieval Rome"

Muey Saeteurn

Assistant Professor of History
Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS

Dissertation: "Cultivating Their Own in Kenya: A Social History of Maragoli Farmers and Development, 1955-1978"

En Li

Assistant Professor of History
Drake University, Des Moines, IA

Dissertation: “Betting on Empire: A Socio-Cultural History of Gambling in Late-Qing China”

2014

Jane F. Green

Marketing and Public Relations Manager
American Historical Association,Washington, D.C.

Dissertation: "The Boundaries of Youth: Labor, Maturity, and Coming of Age in Early Nineteenth-Century New England, 1790-1850"

Nathaniel Green

Assistant Professor of History 
Northern Virginia Community College - Annandale Campus, Annandale, VA

Dissertation: “‘The Man of the People’: National Politics and the Origins of the Presidential Republic, 1787-1807”

Scott Morris

Chair, Department of History and Advisor to the Honor Council
The Montgomery Academy, Montgomery, AL

Dissertation:  "Southern Enlightenment:  Reform and Progress in Jefferson's Virginia"

2013

Rajbir Purewal Hazelwood

Head of Student Outcomes, Student Success, King's College London
London, Greater London, United Kingdom

Dissertation: "A Diasporic Politics of Belonging: Punjabis in Postwar Britain"

Beverly Tsacoyianis

Assistant Professor of History
University of Memphis, Memphis, TN

Dissertation: "Making Healthy Minds and Bodies in Syria, 1903-1961"

Michelle Repice

Assistant Director, Graduate Career Development
Lecturer in American Culture Studies
Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO

Dissertation: "A Mobile Makeover: The Limits of American Automotive Freedom, 1918-1939"

2012

Daniel Scallet

Visiting Assistant Professor of History
Georgia College, Milledgeville, GA

Dissertation: "An Inglorious War: The Second Seminole War, the Ad Hoc Origins of American Imperialism and the Silence of Slavery"

2011

Tanya L. Roth


Upper School Humanities Teacher
Mary Institute and Country Day School (MICDS), St. Louis, MO

Dissertation:  “Battling for Equality: Sexual Integration in the US Military, 1945-1978”


John Aerni-Flessner

Associate Professor of History
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI

Dissertation: “‘If We Govern Ourselves, Whose Son Is to Govern Us?’: Youth, Independence and the 1960s in Lesotho”

Amber Aragon-Yoshida

Volkswagen Foundation Post-doctoral Fellowship in Germany (2011-2012)

Dissertation: "Lustmord and Loving the Other: A History of Sexual Murder in Modern Germany and Austria (1873-1932)"

2010

Kevin Butterfield

Executive Director 
George Washington Presidential Library, Mount Vernon, VA

Dissertation: “Unbound by Law: Association and Autonomy in the Early American Republic”

Alberto Sahagun

Visiting Assistant Professor of History
Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA

Dissertation: “The Birth of Liberalism: The Making of Liberal Political Thought in Spain, France and England, 1808-1823”

Janek Wasserman

Assistant Professor of History
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL

Dissertation: “Black Vienna, Red Vienna: The Struggle for Intellectual and Political Hegemony in Interwar Vienna, 1918-1938”

2009

Keona Ervin

Associate Professor of History
University of Missouri - Columbia, Columbia, MO

Dissertation: “A Decent Living Out of Our Work: Black Women’s Labor Activism in St. Louis, 1929-45”

Michael Markus

Assistant Professor of History
Alabama State University, Montgomery, AL

Dissertation: “Political Passions: Local Parties and National Politics in Leeds, 1832-1867”

David Winder

Associate Professor of History
Principia College, Elsah, IL

Dissertation: “The First Ulster Crisis, 1886”

2008

Mohammad Masad

Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty Member
Zayed University - Dubai

Dissertation: “The Medieval Islamic Apocalyptic Tradition: Divination, Prophecy and the End of Time in the 13th Century Eastern Mediterranean”

David Pennington

Assistant Professor of History, Politics and International Relations
Webster University, St. Louis, MO

Dissertation: “Women in the Market Place: Gender, Commerce and Social Relations in Early Modern English Towns”

2007

Benjamin Cawthra

Associate Professor of History
California State University - Fullerton, Fullerton, CA

Dissertation: “Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography, Race and the Image of Jazz, 1936-1965”

Books by Our PhDs

  • Aerni-Flessner, John. Dreams for Lesotho: Independence, Foreign Assistance, and Development. University of Notre Dame Press. Published as part of the Kellogg Institute Series on Democracy and Development.
     
  • Cawthra, Benjamin. Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
     
  • Cheng, Linsun. Banking in Modern China: Entrepreneurs, Professional Managers, and the Development of Chinese Banks, 1897-1937. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
     
  • Cogswell, Thomas. The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621-1624. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989;
    ~Home Divisions: Aristocracy, the State and Provincial Conflict. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
     
  • Ervin, Keona K. Gateway to Equality: Black Women and the Struggle for Economic Justice in St. Louis. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017.
     
  • Feurer, Rosemary. Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.
     
  • Floyd, Richard D. Church, Chapel and Party: Religious Dissent and Political Modernization in Nineteenth-Century England. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
     
  • Follett, Richard R. Evangelism, Penal Theory and the Politics of Criminal Law Reform in England, 1808-30. London: Palgrave Press, 2001.
     
  • Forslund, Catherine. Anna Chennault: Informal Diplomacy and Asian Relations. Wilmington: SR Books, 2002.
     
  • Gesink, Indira Falk. Islamic Reform and Conservatism: al-Azhar and the Evolution of Modern Sunni Islam. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010;
    ~Barefoot Millionaire: John Baldwin and the Founding of Baldwin Wallace University. Ohio: Baldwin Wallace University Press.
     
  • Greene, Megan J. The Origins of the Developmental State in Taiwan: Science Policy and the Quest for Modernization. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008.
     
  • Hamilton, Phillip. The Making and Unmaking of a Revolutionary Family: The Tuckers of Virginia, 1752-1830. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003.
     
  • Labendz, Jacob Ari, editor. Jewish Property After 1945: Cultures and Economies of Ownership, Loss, Recovery, and Transfer. Routledge, 2018.
     
  • Leighton, Denys. The Greenian Moment: T. H. Green, Religion and Political Argument in Victorian Britain. Exeter, UK, and Charlottesville, Virginia: Imprint Academic, 2004;
    ~Lives of Victorian Political Figures, Part IV, Volume 2: Green and Morris. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009.
     
  • Lopatin-Lummis, Nancy. Political Unions, Popular Politics, and the Great Reform Act of 1832. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999;
    ~Public Life and Public Lives: Politics and Religion in Modern British History: Essays in Honour of Richard W. Davis. Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell, 2008.
     
  • Mayers, Ruth E. 1659: The Crisis of the Commonwealth. Rochester: Boydell and Brewer, 2004.
     
  • McCurdy, John Gilbert. Citizen Bachelors: Manhood and the Creation of the United States. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009.
     
  • Muldoon, Andrew. Empire, Politics and the Creation of the 1935 India Act: Last Act of the Raj. London: Ashgate, 2009.
     
  • Pietz, David Allen. Engineering the State: The Huai River and Reconstruction in Nationalist China, 1927-37. New York: Routledge, 2002.
     
  • Robertson, James. Gone Is the Ancient Glory: Spanish Town, Jamaica, 1534-2000. Kingston: Ian Randle, 2005.
     
  • Rutz, Michael A. The British Zion: Congregationalism, Politics, and Empire, 1790-1850. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2011.
     
  • Sommers, Susan Mitchell. Parliamentary Politics of a County and its Town: General Elections in Suffolk and Ipswich in the Eighteenth Century. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002.
     
  • Sturtz, Linda L. Within Her Power: Propertied Women in Colonial Virginia. New York: Routledge, 2002.
     
  • Thomas, Samuel S. Creating Communities in Restoration England: Parish and Congregation in Oliver Heywood’s Halifax. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
     
  • Todd, Margo. Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987;
    ~The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
     
  • Vostral, Sharra Louise. Under Wraps: A History of Menstrual Hygiene Technology. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008.
     
  • Wasserman, Janek. Black Vienna: The Radical Right in the Red City: 1918-1938. Cornell University Press, 2014.
  • Wei, C. X. George. Sino-American Economic Relations, 1944-1949. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997.
     
  • Weiser, Brian. Charles II and the Politics of Access. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2003.
     
  • Westhoff, Laura M. A Fatal Drifting Apart: Democratic Social Knowledge and Chicago Reform. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2007.