Anna Fett

Anna graduated in August of 2021 and is currently the Visiting Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY for the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 academic years. Her dissertation is titled "Peace Education for the World: People-to-People Programs, American Youth, and U.S. Power, 1939-1961." 

Anna is trained within the history sub-field of “U.S. in the world.” Her scholarly work highlights issues of culture, religion, and imperialism, alongside conceptions of children and youth, within the study of U.S. foreign relations in the 20^th 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.