About the Research Fellowship
The Arizona Historical Society (AHS) awards short-term research fellowships to visiting scholars for one to three weeks of residency in Arizona. It is expected that fellows spend most of their research time at AHS archives in Tucson and/or Tempe, but up to a third of the residency period may be spent at other archives in the state.
At the end of the project, awardees are expected to submit a 3—5-page report on their research experience. Awardees can apply for research support as needed, but awards will not be given to the same recipient in consecutive years. Applicants working on doctoral dissertations and those at the postdoctoral level are especially encouraged to apply. Applications from international scholars are welcomed. Preference is given to projects that have a high probability of publication in the Journal of Arizona History. Following their research visit, fellows are encouraged to make a presentation about their research as part of AHS’s virtual programming series. Projects involving alternative uses of archival records, such as background research for • multimedia projects, exhibits, and documentary films, are eligible, as are projects that will utilize AHS’s 3-D object collections for research purposes.
Awards
Awards range between $500 and $2,000 per project and are intended to defray travel and living expenses and/or other research-related costs.
General Information
AHS Fellowship General Information
Deadline
Applications for the 2026 cycle will open soon. Check back for updates.
Congratulations to the 2025 Fellows!
Kelly Dennis, University of Connecticut- Storrs: Dancing with Light: The Photographic Life and Times of Esther Henderson Abbott, 1911-2008
Andrew Schuster, University of Texas- El Paso: Copper and Ballgames: Revolution, Labor, and Sporting Identities in the Arizona-Sonora Boderlands, 1880-1930
Patti Piburn, California Polytechnic State University- San Luis Obispo: Exploring Yellow Journalism and Newspaper Competition in Arizona’s Territorial Press, 1890–1900
Kaitlin Simpson, University of Lousiana- Lafayette: The Flowers of El Dorado: Gender, Production, and the Cut Flower Industry in the United States and Colombia, 1908-Present
Katherine Massoth, University of New Mexico: Borderwomen: Matriarchal Networks and the Ronstadt Businesses of Territorial Tucson
William Holly, West Virginia University Institute of Technology: “The Mountain is Part of Us:” Tourism, Community, and American Indian Sacred Land in Northern Arizona since 1969
Timothy Bowman, West Texas A&M University: The Maricopa County Organizing Project’s Two-Front War in Defense of the Undocumented in Arizona
Lynn Downey, Independent Scholar: “A Permanent Tubercular Rendezvous:” Fighting Tuberculosis in Arizona
Jake Wolff, Temple University: American Dust Belt: A History of Free Movement, Big Government, and the Makings of Deindustrialization on US Highway 66
Andrea Lara-Garcia, University of California- Berkeley: Who Owns the U.S.-Mexico Border?: Histories of Property and Territoriality along the International Boundary
Katherine Benton-Cohen, Georgetown: Quiet Money: The Family Fortune that Transformed New York, the American Southwest, and the Modern Middle East
2024
Amahia Mallea, Drake University: United at the Divide: An Urban Environmental History of Ambos Nogales
Anne Boyd, Boston University: A Nation of Confederacies: Physical Representations of Pro-Confederate Memory Across the United States from World War II to Present Day
Bryant Partida, Layola University: Interrogating the Axis of Racialized Educational Exclusion: A Relational Critical Race Educational History of Phoenix Union High School District between 1895 and 1982
Chelsea Ball. University of Central Oklahoma: West of Feminism: The Equal Rights Amendment Campaign in the American West
Donna Schuele, University of Southern California: Sandra Day O’Connor and the Reagan Revolution: Her Road to the Supreme Court
Doris Morgan Rueda, Stanford: The New Beginnings of Juvenile Justice: Youth, Law, and Race in the Arizona Borderlands, 1900-1970
Michael Yebisu, University of Oklahoma: Survival, Memory, Revitalization, Adaptation, Relocation, and Preservation: Small Chinatowns Across the West since the 1950s
Raquel Torua Padilla, University of Texas- Austin: From the faithful to the obliged: deportations by conscription and other proscriptions for the Yaqui in revolutionary and post-revolutionary Mexico
Sarah Marsom, Independent scholar: The Bess Prather Project
2023
Mary Ludwig, University of Nevada- Las Vegas: Incarcerated Nations: Removal and Confinement on Indigenous Lands
Sarah Sears, University of California- Berkeley: Negotiating Nature: Diplomacy, Community, and Environment in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
Scott Warren, Independent scholar: Land Tenure in Arizona's Southwest Desert: Border Security, Conservation, the Military, and Mining in an O'odham Landscape
Heather Thiessen-Reily, Western Colorado University: Resilience and Restoration: An Environmental History of the San Bernardino Ranch
Xuening Kong, Purdue University: Identity Forming in Displacement: Chinese Immigrants in U.S.-Mexico Borders, 1899-1945
Pete Soland, University of Houston: Radioactive Borderlands: Uranium Mining in the Southwestern U.S. and Northern Mexico
Koby Song-Nichols, University of Toronto: Grocery Stores with Dirt Floors: A Careful History of Chinese Arizona Grocery Stores
Carolina Ortega, Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi: The Sending State: How the Mexican State of Guanajuato Shaped Twentieth Century U.S. Migration
Tiffany Jasmin Gonzalez, James Madison University: Graciela Olivarez: Radio Personality, Civil Rights Lawyer, and Government Official
Ruth Oropeza, Baylor University: All Public Places Are Closed: Arizona's Forgotten Pandemic Spanish Influenza
2022
Victoria Herrera Cannon, Saint Louis University: Border Visits: American Tourism on the 20th C U.S-Mexico Border
Sarah Louise Dawtry, Northwestern University: From Boom to Bust: Responses to Working Conditions by Mexican Hardrock miners in Mexico and the American Southwest, 1880-1940
Gabrielle Lyle, Texas A&M University: B'nai Borderlands: The Development of Jewish Communities along the U.S.-Mexico Border
Jian Gao, University of Texas- Austin: Chinese Americans in Arizona: Voices and Lived Experiences
Stephanie Hinnershitz, World War II Museum: Desert Blooms: Victory Gardens in the Poston Japanese American Incarceration Camp
Doris Morgan-Rueda, University of Nevada- Las Vegas: Saving the Bad Kids, Caging Los Chicos Malos: Juvenile Justice and Racialized Surveillance on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1900-1975
Vjeran Pavlakovic, University of Rijeka: Tucson's Little Dalmatia: Transnational Migration from Southeastern Europe to the American Southwest, 1880-1920.
David Robles, Kansas State University: Brothers and Sisters in Arms: Chicano Students in the Fight for Social Justice in Arizona
Kelsey Roggensack, Cornell University: Memory and Reflection of the African American Southwest, 1880-1930
