Dissertation Workshops

Student Attending Dissertation Workshop

Dissertation Workshops

The meetings of the CES Dissertation Workshop offer graduate students at Harvard and MIT the opportunity to present their current research to their peers and faculty interested broadly in the study of Europe. It is a student-run, student-centered project and papers will be pre-circulated to the audience in advance.

The CES Dissertation Workshop is a graduate educational seminar and open to graduate students and their advisors. Workshops will be held in-person are open to Harvard and MIT affiliates who are on a regular University COVID-19 testing cadence. Advance RSVP is required. The schedule of upcoming workshops will be updated regularly through the academic year.

Are you a graduate student interested in attending a workshop or presenting your research? Please contact Lauren Bohm, CES Dissertation Workshop Coordinator.

Lauren Bohm

Ph.D. Candidate in History and CES Dissertation Workshop Coordinator

Dissertation Workshop Schedule – 2023-2024

Building the Surveillance State on a Punchcard? How Government Bureaucracies Hinder and Enable Government Surveillance Projects

Dissertation Workshop — Building the Surveillance State on a Punchcard? How Government Bureaucracies Hinder and Enable Government Surveillance Projects

September 22, 2023
2:00pm - 3:30pm

Katharin Tai – Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, MIT; Graduate Student Affiliate, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Chair Lauren Bohm – Ph.D. Candidate in History, Harvard University; Graduate Student Affiliate, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University

Dissertation Workshop — The Empty Space: Territory, Jewish Nationalism, and the Second International, 1880-1919

October 20, 2023
2:00pm - 3:30pm

Nathalie Behrends – Ph.D. Candidate in History, Harvard University

Past Dissertation Workshops

Dissertation Workshops 2022-2023

Emma Friedlander (History, Harvard University) – The Soviet New Age on the Boulevard: Alternative Spirituality, Popular Press, and the End of Times in Russia, Ukraine, and Latvia, 1990-1993

Alexander Hartley (Comparative Literature, Harvard University) – Colonial Copyright Law and Modernist Authorship

Angie Jo (Political Science, MIT) – Varieties of Crisis Response: Welfare Regimes and Emergency Fiscal Spending on COVID-19

Rustam Khan (History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society, MIT) – Apartheid in Schaerbeek: Belgian Migrant Labor and Human Rights During Europe’s Carbon Transition in the 1970s

Dissertation Workshops 2021-2022

Claudio Morana (Economics, Visiting Scholar): A New Macro-Financial Condition Index for the Euro Area
Théophile Deslauriers (Politics, Princeton University): From Status to… Something: S.J. Stephen and Henry Maine on Inequality in Britain and India
Sama Mammadova (History): A Bank for the People: Popular Credit and Moral Economy in Renaissance Italy
Moritz von Brescius (History, John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow): Scarcity Imperialism and the Global Pathways of a Failed Plantation Crop
Maria Giulia Amadio Viceré (Political Science, Visiting Scholar): ‘Let’s Keep This Informal’: Ad Hoc Differentiation in EU Approach to Conflicts and Crises
Matthias Quinckhardt (Economics, University of Heidelberg): War Losses as a Labor Supply Shock: Evidence from Germany
Jacob Hoerger (Government): Weak Messianic Power and Benjamin’s Contribution to the Debate about Historical Injustice
Sergio Leos (History): “Western Desire”: Gender in Allegorical Representations of America
Eric Fabri (Government, Postdoctoral Fellow): Why Democracy? An Autonomy-based Ontological Argument
Note: Unless otherwise noted, all graduate students are Ph.D. candidates at Harvard University.

Dissertation Workshops 2020-2021

Jan Burzlaff (History): After the Dutch Paradox: Jews and non-Jews in the Netherlands (1940–1945)
Bo Yun Park (Sociology): Is S(H)e Presidential? The Changing Scripts of Political Leadership, 1995-2020
Aden Knaap (History): Judging the League: The Permanent Court of International Justice and the League of Nations, 1922-1939
Carmelo Ignaccolo (Urban Studies and Planning, MIT): Unmasking Tourism in Venice: the Relationship between Urban Morphology and Tourism Hotspots

Dissertation Workshops 2019-2020

Louis Gerdelan (History): "Disaster tabulation and miraculous deliverances in the eighteenth century"
Tugba Bozcaga (Political Science MIT): "The Social Bureaucrat: How Social Proximity among Bureaucrats Affects Local Governance in Turkey"
Christopher Havasy (Government): "The Last Invention of Governance: The Rise of Bureaucracy and its Reception in Western Europe"
Joseph la Hausse de Lalouvière (History): "The experience of re-enslavement in French Guiana, 1794–1809"
Frank Blibo (History of Science): "The French and Ivorian Heart Care Specialists at the Institut de Cardiologie d’Abidjan, 1976-2017"
Katarzyna Balug (Landscape & Architecture): "Animating Air and the Body at Its Limits"
Note: Unless otherwise noted, all graduate students are Ph.D. candidates at Harvard University.

Dissertation Workshops 2016-2017

Elizabeth Cross (History): "The Pen and the Sword: Visions of Revanche and the Problem of Company Governance in the French Indian Ocean"
Tomasz Blusiewicz (History): “Überseehafen Rostock: East Germany’s Window to the World under Stasi Watch, 1961-1989”
Rachel Friedman (Government): “The Collectivization of Risk and the Early Welfare State”
Adriana Alfaro Altamirano (Government): “Adam Smith and Max Scheler on Sympathy”
Jamie McSpadden (History): “A Radical Change? Female Parliamentarians’ Influence on European Politics, 1918-1940”
Joshua Ehrlich (History): "Wellesley and the Politics of Fort William College"
Lydia Walker (History): "Politics of Plaint: Nagas, Namibians, and the United Nations System of the early 1960s"
Kristen Loveland (History): “Replacing God: Reproductive Technologies in German Religious and Legal Thought in the 1980s”
Liat Spiro (History): “Drafting Empire: American and German Capital Goods and the Mission Industrialisatrice in the Shandong-Kyushu Corridor, 1880-1914”
Andrew Bellisari (History): “Yesterday’s Enemies: Decolonization and the Role of the Mixed Ceasefire Commissions in French Algeria”
Brandon Bloch (History): “Institutionalizing Protestant Ethics: Families, Schools, and the West German Basic Law, 1949-1957

Dissertation Workshops 2018-2019

Elissa Berwick (Comparative Politics and Methodology, MIT): “Substate nationalism and the scope of redistribution: Evidence from Spain”
Louis Gerdelan (History): “Prophecies of doom or the doom of prophecy? Debates over the astrological prediction of disasters in the Atlantic world, c.1650-1700”
Ian Kumekawa (History): “Lugers and Londonderry: World War I, Ireland, and the origins of modern British gun control”
Deirdre DeBruyn Rubio (Islamic Studies, Religion and Society): “Sacred/secular space: The politics of space and interfaith for French Muslim communities in Paris”
Mikko Silliman (Education Policy & Program Evaluation): “Can schools help close immigrant-native gaps in later outcomes?”
Mina Mitreva (History): “Anarcho-syndicalism from Wilhelmine to Weimar Germany, 1914-1930”
Lucas Melvin Mueller (History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS), MIT): “Risk on the negotiation table: Contaminants, global commodity trade, and experts after empire”
Note: Unless otherwise noted, all graduate students are Ph.D. candidates at Harvard University.

Dissertation Workshops 2017-2018

Brandon Bloch (History): "Conscientious Objection and the Revaluation of Resistance: West Germany, 1949-1961"
Josh Ehrlich (History): "The Anglicist-Orientalist Controversy Revisited: Education and the Ends of the Company State in British India"
James McSpadden (History): “National Parliamentarians on the International Stage: Private Diplomacy and Political Cooperation in Interwar Europe”
Andrew Bellisari (History): "Twelve Anxious Men: Re-Examining Algeria's Transition to Independence"
Brandon Bloch (History): "The Law of Reconciliation: German Protestants and International Law in a Divided World, 1957-1965"
Yukako Otori (History): "Family Passports: Migration and Traffic in Children in the 1920s"
Joshua Ehrlich (History): "Knowledge and the East India Company State, 1785-1795"

Dissertation Workshops 2015-2016

Adriana Alfaro Altamirano (Government): “Great Expectations: Henri Bergson and the Morality of Uncertainty”
Tae-Yeoun Keum (Government): “An Enlightenment Fable: Leibniz and the Boundaries of Reason”
Elizabeth Cross (History): “The French Revolution of the Compagnie des Indes: 1789-1792”
Lydia Walker (History): “In the Shadow of Katanga”
John Harpham (Government): “From Freedom to Slavery”
Colleen Anderson (History): “Cosmic Visitors: The Space Race in East and West Germany, 1957-1969”
Guillaume Wadia (History): “The Deep State and the Imperial Spring, 1934-1937”
Tomasz Blusiewicz (History): “Contraband, bribes, drugs and big bucks: Why was Solidarność born on the Polish Baltic Coast?”
Jamie McSpadden (History): “Constructing and Contesting an Interwar Parliamentary International: The Inter-Parliamentary Union and Conférence parlementaire internationale du commerce”

Dissertation Workshops 2014-2015

Kristen Loveland (History), "Reproducing Dignity: German and American Law and the Politics of Reproductive Technologies at the Millennium"
Carolin F. Roeder (History), "Geographies of Alpine Knowledge: 1857-1932"
Sarah Shortall (History), "The Weapons of the Spirit: Catholic Theology and the Resistance to Nazism"
James R. Martin (History), "The Origins of International Economic Governance: Food, Finance, and Shipping during the First World War, 1916-1920"
Mircea Raianu (History), "Between Paternalism and Technocracy: The Tata Iron and Steel Company and the Circulation of Expertise in the British Empire, 1900-1950"