Principal Investigator
Project Description
Senior theses are the most significant independent work students can do in their majors. For historians, such projects require not only training in research skills, but also access to source materials that are often far removed from New York. Our project supports highly motivated undergraduates at Columbia and Barnard with stipends and intellectual mentorship as they pursue research in European libraries and archives. We guide students as they formulate their potential thesis topics, and, with the assistance of Columbia University Libraries, offer advice on relevant sources and methods. In July, participants convene for a workshop at the Global Center Europe to discuss their progress with Columbia faculty. The project directors introduce the students to the senior thesis as a genre of scholarly writing, and consider issues related to the logistics of historical research. We devote the vast majority of our time to discussions of each student’s project, on the basis of proposals circulated in advance. In addition to these group sessions, we meet in pairs with each student to give more specialized guidance, raise additional questions, and address any unresolved concerns before they return to the archives. To date, student participants in the program have written award-winning senior theses based on archives in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Russia.