Natalie Behrends received an unusual present for her 10th birthday: a biography of Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, the turn-of-the-century American labor activist. The book, a gift from a friend whose parents worked for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) sparked a lifelong interest in international labor history.

“As a kid, I was fascinated by those considered ‘outlaw labor organizers’ in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, like Mother Jones and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,” she recalled. “Then it turned out that a lot of people in the labor movement were immigrants, like my family.”

Behrends carries her fascination with immigration — and her family history — into her work as a Ph.D. student in history at Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Harvard Griffin GSAS). Her dissertation explores how a complex international network of socialist activists developed from around the turn of the 20th century — research that provides scholars with a new understanding of how both socialism and nationalism evolve across state boundaries.