History Alumni
Undergraduate Degrees
JAEL BROWN
Degree: B.A., May 2025Hometown: La Porte, Indiana
Majors: History Honors, English Literature
Minor: Russian
Honors thesis: Global Perception and Interpretation of the 1876-1878 Bulgarian Independence Movement
Minor: Russian
Career plans: My career goal is to work for the Department of State.
Currently: I am pursuing my M.S. in History at Central European University.
My favorite Purdue Department of History memory: I enjoyed visiting Newberry Library for HIST 421.
UMME BUSHRA
Degree: B.A., May 2025Hometown: West Lafayette, Indiana
Career plans: My near future goal is to apply to a PhD program focused on American Foreign Affairs.
Currently: I am completing my M.A. in the Department of History at Purdue University.
A fun fact about me: Aside from English, I am fluent in Bangla. My goal is to become fluent in Japanese as well.
My favorite Department of History memory: I thoroughly enjoyed all the History courses – more specifically the lectures – I took as an undergraduate. They were very fulfilling, since I got to learn a lot.
JIAHUI CHEN
Degree: B.A., May 2025Hometown: Changchun, Jilin, China
Majors: History Honors, Sociology
Honors thesis: Interpreting Hitler: Nazism Perceived by British Union Fascists, 1932-1939
Career plans: My career goal is to become a History professor.
Currently: I am living in Changchun, and I will start my M.A. in International Relations and World History at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China in September 2025.
Fun facts about me: I have a sister who is 12 years older than me. I have a cat that frequently succeeds at catching mice, birds, fish, and insects. I am a maniac fan of potato chips and French fries. I am a passionate anime and game lover. I can recite all British monarchs since William I in order. I am interested in studying fascism. I am a crazy ketchup follower. I am an adamant atheist.
GRACE EVANOSKI
Degree: B.A., May 2025Hometown: St. Louis, Missouri
Majors: History Honors, Anthropology
Honors thesis: Natural Life vs. Legal Life: An Examination of Abortion & Perceptions of Life in the Womb in the Nineteenth Century
Minors: Spanish, Classical Studies
Career plans: I plan to take a break from academia for a couple of years and then return for a master’s degree in History.
Currently: I am living in St. Louis, and I plan to move to Vermont within the next couple of months.
A fun fact about me: I was the Women’s Foil Captain for the Purdue University Fencing Team.
BELLA ROBERTS
Degree: B.A., May 2025Hometown: Jasper, Indiana, a small town in Southwest Indiana (close to Kentucky)
Major: History, Law and Society
Career plans: I plan to become a high school history and sociology teacher and maybe work towards an administrative position. (I hope to teach about the whaling industry in the northeast in early American history for some reason!)
Currently: I am working towards my master’s in Secondary Ed in Social Studies Education at Western Governors University. I am also covering a sick leave, teaching U.S. History at a surrounding school.
Fun fact about me: I once stayed in a haunted inn in Inverness, Scotland. The innkeepers had a book of guest sightings of different ghosts.
My favorite Purdue memory: I loved my time with Professor Foray in my 395 and 495 classes. She taught me how to really branch out in my knowledge of different historical perspectives and have fun while learning some difficult facts and ways of interpreting history. I also loved my time working in the History Department office and getting to know the faculty on a different level.
AMELIA SIMPSON
Degree: B.A., May 2025Hometown: West Lafayette, Indiana
Major: History Honors
Honors thesis: The Bad Apple: New York City, the YMCA, and Obscenity Regulation in the United States Postal Service (1850-1873)
Minors: Spanish, English
Career plans: I will pursue a master’s degree in library and information science to prepare for work in an archive, museum, or other cultural heritage institution.
Currently: I am taking a gap year to travel and work temporarily in a library, museum, or archive.
Fun facts about me: I caught a piranha on the Amazon River. I sewed my sister’s prom dress.
My favorite Department of History memories: Many late-night walks with friends, presenting my history thesis research, and graduating this year with my partner, Ethan.
Graduate Degrees
STANDA PEJŠA
Degree: PhD, May 2025Hometown: West Lafayette, Indiana
Field: My research interests lie in European and global history, transnational history, and intellectual history, as well as computational and quantitative methods, questions of reproducibility and sustainability of research data in the humanities, and data visualization.
Dissertation: Determining People, Reordering Places. Visions of Transformations of the Postwar World, 1916-1920, which received the 2025 CLA Distinguished Dissertation Award, explores the vocabularies and imaginaries of the postwar world order during the First World War. The dissertation investigates the role of academic experts and intellectuals mobilized by the Allied governments to bring forth a new and viable organization of international relations. The quantitative methods, primarily those used in text analysis, were essential for understanding the thinking, rhetoric, and vocabularies of those who shaped the new world order at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
About me: In addition to my PhD in History from Purdue, I also have my M.A. in History from Charles University, Prague (the Czech Republic) and the Central European University, Budapest (Hungary), as well as an MLIS from Rutgers, New Brunswick. After a brief career in newspapers, I worked in archives and libraries in New York City, helping to build comprehensive digital collections from archival materials. Eventually, my interests in research workflows and digital preservation brought me to work with research data at Purdue. After a few years, the opportunities offered by digital humanities lured me back to the historical research, and to the doctoral program here at Purdue.
ANGELA BOWEN POTTER
Degree: PhD, December 2024; Digital Humanities CertificateHometown: Greenwood, Indiana
Dissertation: Locating Mental Illness Treatment Experiences in Indianapolis, 1945-1975
Currently: I am working with the U.S. Census Bureau and community organizations on history projects.
MINDY WILLIAMS
Degree: PhD, May 2025Hometown: Columbus, Ohio
Field: Early Modern England and France, queenship, women’s history
Dissertation: Queenship, Dynasty, and Exile: Mary Beatrice of Modena and Political Agency
Currently: I am residing in Columbus, Ohio, and I plan to move to Michigan before the year’s end. I am employed at the University of Michigan in the Office of Research and Sponsored Projects as a pre-award grants officer.
About me: I received my undergraduate degree in Music and Business from Otterbein University in Ohio, and afterwards I spent five years as a grant writer and foundation relations specialist for Chicago’s PBS station/classical radio station. I then moved to Milwaukee to begin role as a pre-award grants administrator at Marquette University. While there, I completed my M.S. in medieval European History, focusing on queenship. In 2019, I came to Purdue for my PhD. Now that I have finished, I have returned to grants administration at the University of Michigan!
Fun facts about me: I love anime/manga, books, dogs, music, and traveling. Most of the coolest places I’ve visited were because of tours with the many choirs I have been part of over the years. Always looking to add more stamps to my passport!
What’s next: I’d like to earn a master’s degree in library science eventually because I am a lifelong learner, book lover, and professional nerd. And I’d love to learn bookbinding as a hobby.
My favorite Department of History memory: The most meaningful thing that made my experience at Purdue so special was the people. My cohort full of amazingly smart people, and the faculty and staff who offered such meaningful mentoring and support. I couldn’t have finished without them, and they will always have my gratitude.