George E. Pozzetta Dissertation Award
Committee
Award Details
The Immigration and Ethnic History Society (IEHS) invites submissions for two awards of $3,500 each to help graduate students with their dissertations on U.S. immigration, emigration, or ethnic history, broadly defined. These awards are intended for graduate students in the process of researching and writing their dissertations, not for students completing and defending in 2027. For the 2027 award, the committee invites applications from any Ph.D. candidate who will have completed qualifying exams by the end of 2026.
Eligibility
Applicants will submit the following materials to pozzetta_award@iehs.org, which will reach all committee members:
- A 1500-word descriptive proposal in English discussing the significance of the work, the methodology, sources, and collections to be consulted.
- A proposed budget.
- A brief curriculum vitae.
In addition, applicants will arrange for their major advisor to submit a supporting letter to pozzetta_award@iehs.org.
Application materials and the supporting letter must be received by December 15, 2026.
Awardees who do not have sufficient funds to attend the IEHS banquet to receive their award will have an opportunity to request limited financial assistance from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society.
Previous Recipients
2026
Victoria Huynh (UC Berkeley): “Criminalized Refuge: Southeast Asians in the U.S. Deportation Pipeline.”
Carlotta Wright De La Cal (UC Berkeley): “Borderland Tracks: Native Nations, Railroad Labor, and the Remaking of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1880-1945.”
2025
Samantha Haddad Prophet (The College of William & Mary): “Policing Paddies: Undocumented Irish Migration, Law Enforcement, and the Boundaries of Federalism, 1986-1996.”
Annie Himler Cheng (Baylor University): “Crossroad Travelers: Cambodian American Journeys Through the Pacific and Places of Resilience, 1950-Present.”
2024
Verenize Arceo (University of Wisconsin-Madison): “Gateway to Community: Ethnic Mexican Place-Making in California’s San Joaquin Valley, 1965-1995.”
Samuel Niu (Columbia University): “The Other Chinese Question: Immigration, Emancipation, and the Problem of Labor in the Atlantic World, 1843-1884.”
2023
Jian Gao (University of Texas at Austin).
Kimberly White (University of Pennsylvania).
2022
Kimberly Phuong Beaudreau (University of Illinois at Chicago): “Economic Migrants and the Decline of the American Refugee and Asylum System, 1975-2000.”
Connie Thomas (Queen Mary University of London): “Regional Identity and the Foundations of US Migration Policy in the Early American Republic, 1776-1804.”
2021
Lauren Catterson (University of Toronto): “Disreputable Conduct: Misfeasance, Malfeasance, and the US Immigration Service, 1903 to 1940.”
Jonathan Cortez (Brown University): “The Age of Encampment: Race, Surveillance, and the Power of Spatial Scripts, 1933-1950.”
2020
Karma Palzom (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Political Transformations in the Tibetan Freedom Movement: Resettlement and Political Activism in the United States.”
Kyle Pruitt (University of Maryland), “Possessing a Nation: Labor, Race, and the Invention of a Gatekeeping Economy, 1882-1924.”
2019
Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez (Columbia University), “Migrants in the Making: Invisible Agricultural Child Labor and the Limits of Citizenship in the Twentieth Century.”
Miles Culpepper (University of California, Berkeley), “Guatemalan Exiles in Cold War North America, 1954-1996”
2018
Philip D. Erenrich (Syracuse University), The Assumption of Identity: the Exclusion and Deportation of ‘Gypsy’ Immigrants from the US, 1891-1932”
Yukako Otori (Harvard University), “Disposable Subjects: Child Migration, International Law, and U.S. Immigration Policy, 1882-1929”
2017
Eladio Bobadilla (Duke University), “One People without Borders”: The Lost Roots of the Immigrants’ Rights Movement, 1954-1994”
Katherine Carper (Boston College), “The Business of Migration, 1830-1880”
2016
Stephanie Fairchild (University of California, San Diego), “Every Generation Has to Win it Again: Understanding SEIU’s Justice for Janitors Campaign in the Continuum of Radical Struggle for Justice and Dignity”
Jessica Ordaz (University of California, Davis), “Making Invisible Carceral Spaces Visible: Migration, State Violence, and Activism at the El Centro Immigration Detention Center, 1947-2014”
2015
Suraya Kahn (Rice University), “Finding Palestine in America: The Impact of the Arab-Israeli Conflict on Arab-American Identity”
Laura Gutierrez (University of California, San Diego), “Repatriation and Revolutionary Promise: Migration, US-Mexico Relations and Transnational Citizenship, 1920-1964″
2014
Barry McCarron, (Georgetown University), “The Global Irish and Chinese: Migration, Exclusion, and Foreign Relations Among Empires”
Cecilia Márquez, (University of Virginia), “Southern Transformations: Latino/as, African Americans and the Making of the U.S. South, 1945-1970″
2013
Mayra Avita (University of California San Diego), “Political Comadrazgo: Chicana Networks, Gender Politics, and Ethinic Identity in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles”
Kristina Poznan (College of William and Mary), “Becoming Immigrant Nation Builders; The Advancement of Austria-Hungary’s National Projects in the United States, 1880s-1920s”
2012
Adam Goodman (University of Pennsylvania), “Mexican Migration and the Rise of the Deportation Regime, 1942-2010″
2011
Marieke Polfliet (University of Nice Sophia Antopolis, France), “Emigration and Politicization: French Migrants in New York and New Orleans in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (1803-1860)”
2010
Jared Toney (University of Toronto), “Locating Diaspora: Afro-Caribbean Migration and the Transnational Dialectics of Community in North America, 1910-1929″
2009
Hidetaka Hirota (Boston College), “‘To any place beyond sea where he belongs’: Nativism, Citizenship, and the Deportation of Paupers in Massachusetts, 1848-1877”
2008
Danielle Battisti (SUNY, Buffalo), “Manipulating Immigration Restriction in Postwar America: Italian Americans and Italian Immigration, 1945-1965″
2007
Rachel Kranson (New York University), “Grappling with the Good Life: Anxieties of Jewish Affluence and Consumption in Postwar America, 1945-1967″
2006
Arissa H. Oh (University of Chicago), “Into the Arms of America: Adoption from Korea, 1950-1969″
2005
David J. LaVigne (University of Minnesota), “Black Mesabi: Race, Ethnicity and Nation on the Mesabi Iron Range”
John W. Weber III, (College of William and Mary), “The Shadow of the Revolution: South Texas, the Mexican American Working Class”
2004
Julia Maria Schiavone Camacho (University of Texas, El Paso), “Mexicans and Chinese in the Formation of Gender, Race and Nation in the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands, 1910-1940″
2003
Vadim Koukouchkine (Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario), “Peasants on the Move: Slavic Labour Migration from the Russian Empire to Canada”
2002
Jennifer Guglielmo (University of Minnesota), “Negotiating Gender, Race, and Coalition: Italian Women and Working-Class Politics in New York City, 1880-1914″
2001
Anna Pegler-Gorden (University of Michigan), “In Sight of America: Photography and U.S. Immigration Policy, 1880-1930″
2000
Daniel A. Gebler (University of Southern California), “Redefining Jewish Space in Los Angeles: Negotiating Identity in a Twentieth Century American Metropolis”
1999
Serena Ruth Zabin (Rutgers University), “Places of Exchange: Race, Gender and New York City, 1700-1765″
1998
Richard Sukjoo Kim (University of Michigan) “The Dialecttics of Nationalism and Ethnicity: Korean Immigration to the United States and Transnational Politics, 1882-1945″
1997
Nancy C. Carnevale (Rutgers University), “Living in Translation: Language and Italian Immigrants in the U.S., 1900-1968″
1996
Russell Kazal (University of Pennsylvania), “Becoming Old Stock: Religion and the Waning of German-American Identity in Philadelphia, 1900-1930″