Ph.D.'s on the Market

Anna is trained within the history sub-field of “U.S. in the world.” Her scholarly work highlights issues of culture, religion, and imperialism within the study of U.S. foreign policy and foreign relations in the 20th century. Her research also contributes to peace studies by contextualizing the dominant motives, values, and history of this multi-disciplinary field, especially as it has developed within the United States. Anna's research examines how certain essentializing discourses about youth, as threatening “troublemakers” and potential “peacebuilders,” have led to the expansion of particular kinds of programming for youth as well as how these programs have reinforced these problematic characterizations, with serious repercussions for young people both at home and abroad. This year, she has been invited to contribute to an edited volume on the state of the field of research and advocacy regarding youth and peacebuilding. Anna was a Notre Dame Presidential Fellow from 2015-2019 and a 2019-2020 Pepe Fellow. In 2017, she was awarded the University of Notre Dame “Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award” in her department.

An estimated nine million people die annually of human-produced toxic pollution. Many more millions are estimated to die of the effects of environmental change caused by human-produced non-toxic pollution, such as droughts made more frequent and severe under the stress of climate change. This is why I research environmental violence and work to raise awareness of it.