Student Programs
The 2025–2026 Graduate Student Associates (GSAs) and staff—including Program Director Erez Manela, center—celebrate after their final lunch meeting of the academic year. Thank you to this year’s GSAs for all their hard work and dedication! Credit: Lauren McLaughlin
Graduate Students
Best wishes to all our Graduate Student Associates who are graduating this spring:
Yi Ning Chang (Department of Government), “Intellectual Origins of the Postcolonial State: Southeast Asia, 1926–1960”
Sandra El Hadi (Harvard Graduate School of Education), “Essays on Parenting and Early Language Development”
Seokweon Jeon (Committee on the Study of Religion), “Sacred Borders, Divine Hierarchies: American Liberal Protestants, US Immigration Policymaking, and the Un/Making of the Asian Exclusion Era, 1875–1924”
Gene Kim (Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations), “Upwellings of Oceanic Decolonization: Coastal Governance in Japan and Korea, 1894–1958”
Andrew O’Donohue (Department of Government), “Law versus Democracy: Why Courts Defend—or Undermine—Democracy”
Michael Zanger-Tishler (Department of Sociology and Program in Social Policy, Harvard Kennedy School), “State Data and the Production of Quantitative Knowledge”
By enabling me to form new international and interdisciplinary connections and friendships, the Weatherhead Center transformed my experience in graduate school.
Undergraduate Students
Best wishes to all our Undergraduate Associates who are graduating this spring:
Samy Almshref (Philosophy; Economics) / Alin Asim (Molecular and Cellular Biology; Anthropology) / Kashish Bastola (History) / Kendall Carll (History) / Brennis Carrillo (Government; Theatre, Dance, and Media) / Maria Cheng (Applied Mathematics; Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences / Camila Cruz (Social Studies; Philosophy) / Eva Frazier (Social Studies; Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights) / Dalal Hassane (History and Literature; Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations) / Aisha Kokan (History of Science; Government) / Katy Lin (Social Studies; East Asian Studies) / Dominykas Navickas (Government; Economics) / Hana O’Looney (Government; Economics) / Kayla Reifel (History of Science) / Sofia Santos de Oliveira (Government; Economics) / Thomas Tait (Government) / Tesia Thomas (Economics) / Kaitlyn Tran (Government) / Kawsar Yasin (History; Anthropology) / Hailee Youn (Government; Economics)
The Weatherhead Center congratulates the following undergraduate students who were awarded 2026 Thomas Temple Hoopes Prizes on the basis of their outstanding scholarly work:
Kashish Bastola / “The CIA’s ‘Young Turks’: Tibetan Nationalists in the Cold War University”
Kendall Edward Carll III / “Limits of Liberty: The United States, China, and the Rise of Democratic Taiwan, 1989–1998”
Katy Yifan Lin / “When the Past Beckons: Colonial Memory and the Persistence of Japan in Taiwanese Life, 1971–1994”
Sofia Santos de Oliveira / “The Wound That Aches but Does Not Bleed: How Political Disinformation on Social Media Erodes Social Cohesion in Brazil”
2026 Undergraduate Thesis Conference
On February 5–6, the Center’s undergraduate students presented their thesis research findings in a series of panels.
Left to right: Undergraduate students Alin Asim, Aisha Fathima Kokan, and Kayla Renae Reifel present their research in one of the many panels of the Undergraduate Thesis Conference. Credit: Lauren McLaughlin
Samy Almshref shares a written passage in his presentation. Credit: Lauren McLaughlin
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