Amir Abahel is a doctoral student in the History Department. His research focuses on the history of economic life and capitalism in the early modern period, including how changes in pricing methods and practices relate to wider changes in the thinking and understanding of markets in society. Amir earned a BA and an MA from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. amirabahel2025@u.northwestern.edu
Alex Baines is a British citizen and doctoral student in the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama. He received a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford in 2012 and an MA in Text and Performance from Birkbeck, University of London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2014. His research interests are focused on reconstructed, repurposed, and historically-informed aesthetic spaces and their capacity to function effectively as centers of education and community engagement. alexbaines2025@u.northwestern.edu
Agam Balooni is a doctoral student in the English Department. His primary interest is the gothic—in particular, the relationship between crisis and productivity as the gothic intersects with the history of the market, fuses with realism in the nineteenth century, and expands into transnational and comparative dimensions. agambalooni2025@u.northwestern.edu
Julia Barr is a Ph.D. student in the History Department with a particular focus on modern Black British history. Her research interests include postwar immigration, Black British community life, and Black transnationalist politics and culture. JuliaBarr2028@u.northwestern.edu
Jennifer Comerford is a doctoral student in English studying eighteenth-century British literature. She is interested in how epistolarity dramatizes consciousness and identity construction. Her research interests include cross-channel exchange, agency, and consent. jennifercomerford2023@u.northwestern.edu
Samantha English is a doctoral student in the English Department studying nineteenth-century British literature. She focuses on Victorian novels and is interested in questions of voice, subjectivity, and figurative representation as they pertain to nineteenth-century women both real and fictional. Samantha holds a BA in English from Wellesley College. samanthaenglish2026@u.northwestern.edu
Ali Faraj is a doctoral student in Performance Studies with an MA and BA in English Literature and a BE in Computer Engineering from the American University, Beirut. He is studying elements of performance, class, and sexuality in post-WWII working-class culture in Britain, particularly in Kitchen Sink Drama and the Angry Young Men movement, but also in works by female playwrights and novelists such as Shelagh Delaney, Nell Dunn and Gillian Freeman. He is also interested in performances of race and class in northern England’s underground music and dance scene in the 1960s and ’70s. alifaraj2022@u.northwestern.edu
Maria Katsulos is a doctoral student in the History Department, studying 17th century English and Scottish gender, sex, and sexuality through art, literature, and theater studies. She received a B.A. in History and a B.A. in English from Southern Methodist University, where she was a President’s Scholar. mariakatsulos2027@u.northwestern.edu
Brian Leahy is a doctoral student in the department of Art History studying contemporary art. He focuses on the relationships among contemporary art, economics, and the state, particularly during the 1980s. A central interest is the history of Irish art, including issues of intra-European colonialism, transatlantic migration, racialization(s) of the Irish in the United States, and contemporary Irish economic policy. brianleahy2020@u.northwestern.edu
Madelyn Lugli is a doctoral candidate in the History Department. She specializes in twentieth-century Britain and empire, with particular focus on the intersections of British nationalism and internationalism during the interwar years. madelyn.r.lugli@gmail.com
Christopher Montague is a doctoral student in the African American Studies Department. He specializes in twentieth-century political radicalism, identity and un/belonging among the African diaspora in Britain, especially regarding their migratory experience from Britain’s former colonies in West Africa and the Caribbean to the metropole. Chris earned his BA in History from the University of Exeter, UK. christophermontague2023@u.northwestern.edu
Govind Narayan is a Ph.D. student in English whose interests include material culture in nineteenth-century literature and questions of circulation, exchange, and value. He is also interested in the social, cultural, and environmental implications of how we treat things, including practices of consumption and non-market methods of evaluation. Before coming to Northwestern, Govind worked as a musician in Mumbai. He completed his BA in English in 2018 from Ashoka University in New Delhi, where he also worked as a teaching fellow for a year. govindponnuchamy2025@u.northwestern.edu
Catherine Perez is a Ph.D. student in History studying 17th century English radical religion, popular politics, and print culture. Her research explores how antinomian and subordinated groups carved out a space for themselves in the contentious and fluctuating social, political, and religious spaces of mid-to-late 17th century England. She received her B.A. from the University of Florida and an M.A. in History from the University of Alabama. CatherinePerez2028@u.northwestern.edu
Holly Swenson is a doctoral student in the History Department. She specializes in the history of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century British World, with a particular interest in business history and the export of media and cultural products. hollyswenson2024@u.northwestern.edu
Tyler Talbott is a Ph.D. candidate in English studying Victorian literature. He is interested in pairing colonial and canonical texts to assess how increased spatial and cultural mobility de-centers and destabilizes periodization and national canon formation. His research interests include 19th-century patterns of emigration, the global circulation of novels, and colonial women novelists. tylertalbott2023@u.northwestern.edu
Elizabeth Winter is a doctoral student in the English department. She studies nineteenth-century British literature with a particular interest in representations of violence, fraught modes of female agency, empire, and textual circulation and adaptation. Elizabeth earned her BA in English, French and Political Science from Vanderbilt University. elizabethwinter2025@u.northwestern.edu
Olivia Xu is a doctoral student in the English Department. She focuses on the nineteenth-century English novel, with a particular interest in visual culture and aesthetic theories. Her MPhil thesis examines the ubiquitous presence of fictional portraits in the nineteenth-century English novel and argues against the common “narrative reading” of visual arts in the novel. She is also currently co-chair of the Long Nineteenth-Century Colloquium at Northwestern. lingyixu2023@u.northwestern.edu
ALUMNI
Claire Arnold, Ph.D in History (2023): The Demands of Distance: British Families and the World, 1830-1914 (Chair: Deborah Cohen).
Shannon Blaha, Ph.D in History (2014). Mutual Interest: A Study of Cultural Cross-Border
Cooperation in Ireland, 1938-1968 (Chair: B. Heyck).
Ryan Burns, Ph.D. in History (2019). Potential Protestants: Catholics, Conformity and Conversion in Early Modern Scotland, 1560-1780. (Chair: S. Sowerby). Current position: Assistant Professor of History at Jacksonville State University.
Will Cavert, Ph.D. in History (2011): Producing Pollution: Coal, Smoke and Society in London, 1550-1750 (Chair: E. Shagan). Current position: Assistant Professor of History at St Thomas University in St Paul, Minnesota.
Teri Chettiar, Ph.D. in History (2013): The Psychiatric Family: Citizenship, Private Life, and Emotional Health in Welfare-State Britain, 1945-1979 (Chair: A. Owen). Current position: Assistant Professor of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Zirwat Chowdhury, Ph.D. in Art History (Spring 2012): “Imperceptible Transitions”: The Anglo-Indianization of British Architecture, 1769-1822 (Chair: S. H. Clayson). Current position: Visiting Faculty Member in Visual Arts, Bennington College.
Clay Cogswell, Ph.D in English (2021): A Victorian Disposition: Emotional Susceptibility in the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Chair: Chris Lane).
Ruby Ray Daily, Ph.D. in History (2021): Voluptuous Cruelty: Sex and Violence in Modern Britain (Chair: D. Cohen). Current position: Postdoctoral Fellow, Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, Northwestern University.
Gil Engelstein, Ph.D. in History (2022): Queer Europe: Gay Liberation between Market and Movement (Chair: D. Cohen). Current position: Chabraja CCHS Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Northwestern University.
Anna Fenton-Hathaway, Ph.D. in English (Fall 2012): Novel Perspectives on Victorian Britain’s “Redundant” Women (Chair: C. Lane). Current positions: Lecturer in Chicago Field Studies, Northwestern University, and Managing Editor of the journal Literature and Medicine.
Laura Ferdinand, Ph.D in Interdisciplinary Ph.D in Theatre and Drama (2022): Ladies Made: Racialized Performances of Femininity in the Segregated South (Chair: Tracy Davis).
Menglu Gao, Ph.D. in Comparative Literary Studies and English (2021): The Lacquered Chinese Box: Opium, Addiction, and the Fantasy of Empire in Nineteenth-Century British Literature (Chair: C. Lane). Current position: Assistant Professor of English, University of Denver.
Johana Godfrey, Ph.D in English.
Emma Goldsmith, Ph.D. in History (Fall 2017): In Trade: Wealthy Business Families in Glasgow and Liverpool, 1870-1930 (Chair: D. Cohen). Current position: at Springer Nature in the UK.
Alícia Hernàndez Grande, Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama (2022).
Christie Harner, Ph.D. in English (Fall 2010): Character Science and Its Discontents: Victorian Literary Interventions into Debates about Phrenology and Physiognomy (Chair: C. Herbert). Current position: Development Officer, Quality in Learning and Teaching Development, Newcastle University, UK.
Darcy Heuring, Ph.D. in History (2011): Health and the Politics of “Improvement” in British
Colonial Jamaica, 1914-1945 (Chair: A. Owen). Current position: Assistant Director and Earl S. Johnson Instructor in the Masters of Arts Program in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago.
Emily C. Hoyler, Ph.D. in Musicology (Spring 2016): Broadcasting Englishness: National Music in Interwar BBC Periodicals (Chair: L. Austern). Current Position: Lecturer in Liberal Arts, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Maha Jafri, Ph.D. in English (Spring 2016): Between Us: Gossip, Sociability, and the Victorian Novel (Chair: C. Lane). Current position: Assistant Professor of English at Sewanee, the University of the South.
Lisa Kelly, Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama (Spring 2019): Constructing Celebrity: Strategies of 19th-Century British Actresses to Enhance Their Images and Social Status (Chair: T. Davis). Current position: Program Coordinator, CIRTL, University of Iowa.
Hosanna Krienke, Ph.D. in English (Fall 2016): The Afterlife of Illness: Narratives and Practices of Convalescence in Victorian Britain (Chair: J. Law). Current position: Post-Doctoral Researcher in English and History of Medicine, Oxford University.
Alexandra Lindgren-Gibson, Ph.D. in History (Spring 2016): Working-Class Raj: Renegotiating Class, Sexuality and Race, 1858-1914 (Chair: A. Owen). Current position: Assistant Professor of History, University of Mississippi.
Jason Lusthaus, Ph.D. in English (Spring 2016): Victorian Reincarnations: Jesus, Religion, and Doubt in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Chair: C. Lane).
Katya Maslakowski, Ph.D. in History (2022): Men of Violence: The Rise of British Counterinsurgency Expertise at the End of Empire, 1919-1998 (Chair: D. Cohen). Current position: Assistant Professor of History, University of Southern Mississippi.
Sarah Mason, Ph.D in English (2021).
Elizabeth Caitlin McCabe, Ph.D. in English (Spring 2013): How the Past Remains: George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and the Victorian Anthropological Doctrine of Survivals (Chair: C. Herbert). Current position: Lecturer in Chicago Field Studies, Northwestern University.
Nina Moon, Ph.D in English (2022): Mobile Women: Domesticity, Race, and Empire in the Eighteenth Century Transatlantic, 1666-1831 (Chair: Kelly Wisecup).
Todd Nordgren, Ph.D in English (2020). Current position: Director of LGBTQ+ Programs and Services at Wellesley College.
Laurence Robbins, Ph.D. in History (Spring 2013): The Foundations of Education: Charity and the Educational Revolution in Tudor and Stuart England, 1560-1640 (Chair: E. Shagan). Current position: Teacher of Social Studies, Ed W. Clark High School, Las Vegas, NV.
Aileen Robinson, Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama (Summer 2016): Technological Wonder: The Theatrical Fashioning of Scientific Practice, 1780-1905 (Chair: T. Davis). Current position: Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University.
Sarah Roth, Ph.D. in English (Fall 2017): An Interesting Condition: Reproduction and the Un-Domestication of the Victorian Novel (Chair: J. Law). Current position: Visiting Assistant Professor of English, Northwestern University.
Chris Vickers, Ph.D. in History (Spring 2013): The Economics of Crime in Victorian England (Chair: J. Mokyr). Current position: Assistant Professor of Economics, Auburn University.
Winter Jade Werner, Ph.D. in English (Spring 2014): The Gospel and the Globe: Missionary Enterprises and the Cosmopolitan Imagination, 1795-1860 (Chair. C. Herbert). Current position: Assistant Professor of English, Wheaton College, Mass.