Princeton University History Department

History graduate students reflect a variety of backgrounds and interests. While many come directly from undergraduate institutions with history degrees, others come to the program after careers in an array of fields from acting to music to underwater archeology. All share a passion for, and a commitment to, historical scholarship.  Profiles of some of our current students are available below.

Tikia Hamilton’s passion for African-American history first emerged as a result of her experience as a Mellon Fellow at Dartmouth College, but it would take ten more years to convince her that studying for a Ph.D. was a path she was willing to explore. “I wasn’t necessarily sure that I wanted to be an academic,” Hamilton recalls, “and I was also eager to pay off at least some of my educational loans.” read more...

Marcia Schenck’s love for learning has taken her to unpredictable places. She has trekked through Namibia’s desert, celebrated a lunar eclipse with the San in Botswana, and climbed Table Mountain. But her most significant journeys have been across the Atlantic. Convinced that an American liberal arts education would serve her better than a specialized German one, she left friends and family behind at a young age to study history and international relations at Mount Holyoke. read more...

Historians usually downplay the significance of chance in their narratives, but Joe Ricci’s story would not be complete without a nod to serendipity. The 25-year-old from Springfield, Massachusetts, entered college thinking that he would become a molecular biologist, only to find that the introductory courses had been over-subscribed to. Biding his time, he enrolled in Greek and Roman history classes to fulfill a humanities requirement, but ended up declaring Classics as his major by his sophomore year. read more...

A native of Houston, Jack Tannous exudes remarkable academic energy. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a 4.0 GPA, with majors in philosophy, Arabic, Middle Eastern studies, and history. He received a Marshall Scholarship to attend Oxford University, where he received an M.Phil. in Eastern Christian studies with distinction in 2004. From there, it was off to Princeton to study late antique history. “I wanted to be trained as an historian and I felt like if I came here I’d be challenged to do that. ‘Make new friends but keep the old,' as they say."  read more...

For Bill Bulman, being in the graduate history program at Princeton means being able to pursue his interest in seventeenth-century British history, while at the same pursuing an interest in social theory and social science that he believes will help him understand history. “Right now I am studying quantitative and formal methods that aren’t part of historians’ usual methodological repertoire. I’m curious about whether these methods might be useful for studying early modern European politics.” read more...

Sarah Kampbell is one of the most adventurous people you’ll find in the graduate history program. She has worked on underwater archaeological digs all over the globe and now plans to bring her knowledge of nautical archeology to her study of Byzantine history. read more...

Graduate students in Princeton’s Department of History come from an amazing variety of backgrounds, but among them Mayhill C. Fowler’s career change is one of the most dramatic. That’s only fitting, as Fowler has transformed from actress to historian. read more...

You probably wouldn’t expect to find a rock musician sitting backstage reading history, but that’s exactly what Lo Faber was doing while he was touring his band, God Street Wine, for most of the 1990s. read more...

Tracking down Leah Wright these days can be challenging. One week she’ll be following leads at the Lyndon Baines Johnson presidential library, the next she’ll be poring over Gerald Ford’s papers in Ann Arbor. She’s tracking the course of black Republicans over the last 40 years, and making important contributions to U.S. political history and African American studies in the process. read more...