The History Department held our 2024 Annual Graduate Student Awards dinner Monday, April 29 at the University of Georgia Founders Memorial Garden.Our annual event recognizes those graduate students who have exceeded expectations in scholarship, teaching, and leadership while enrolled in graduate studies. Our graduate students have received a number of external awards and grants this year as well. Listed below are the recipients of this years departmental awards and a few notable others.

Kudos to Matthew O’Neal (Ph.D. ‘23)

Our April spotlight features the work and excellence of our graduate students, who recently hosted the 2024 History Graduate Student Association Conference, "Old South, New South, No South". Sessions included "Utilizing Public History as a Tool for Community Building and Social Justice", "Indigeneity Across Space and Time, Violence and Resistance in Southern Memories", Segregation and Integration in the Jim Crow South", and "Communal, Political, and Religious Ties in the Antebellum South".

Our March spotlight is on doctoral student and Presidential Fellow Cole Wicker. He is the Executive Director of Heart of Deep River Historical Society (HODR), a non-profit in Sanford, North Carolina, that aims to collect, preserve, and share history within this former coal mining region.  Founded in 2021, the organization has grown exponentially, focusing first and foremost on community engagement.

Our February spotlight highlights our annual Black History Month calendar, a month-long schedule open to the UGA community and public.

Each year we add a variety of programming in addition to regularly scheduled events in celebration of Black History Month. In the past, these events have included book clubs, historic tours, lectures, book talks, and more.

Our January spotlight shines on our faculty this month: History Behind the Headlines is an ongoing talk and Q and A series presented by our faculty experts and designed to give a historical perspective on the news. The talks are scheduled on a non-regular basis in response to crises and significant events of the day.

Our November spotlight features Terrell DeShawn Roberts. Terrell is a fourth-year student majoring in History and Political Science with a minor in philosophy. Terrell is from Atlanta, Georgia, and has spent his time completely immersed in our UGA community! 

Our October spotlight features Libia Jiménez Chávez.  Libia is a twentieth-century interdisciplinary historian studying migrations between Georgia and Latin America. More broadly, she is interested in transnational histories, processes of placemaking, and the relationship between race, belonging, and residency status. Through archival and oral histories, she is examining the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA/La Amnístia) to understand the resulting transformations that occurred within Georgia's immigrant communities.