The VMHC is pleased to award 18 research fellowships to scholars from 17 colleges and universities across
the United States. Made possible, in part, by support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, these fellows will
conduct research at the VMHC’s E. Claiborne Robins, Jr. Research Library in 2024 and 2025. 

For more information about the application process, visit VMHC Fellowship Program. 

Jared Asser, Ph.D. Candidate in History (University of Georgia): one week
For research into how emotions and emotional rhetoric influenced crises in Virginia during the Reconstruction period.

Dr. Hoyt Bleakley, Professor of Economics (University of Michigan): one week
For research into innovation on antebellum plantations and challenges to free labor in the nineteenth-century Tidewater and Piedmont in Virginia.

James Greevy, Ph.D. Candidate in History (George Mason University): one week
For research into civilian casualties in Civil War Virginia and their implications for military and civilian leadership. 

Dr. Bob Hutton, Associate Professor of History & Appalachian Studies (Glenville State University): one week
For research into the role of the Baldwin-Felts Agency in supporting segregation and challenging industrial democracy in Appalachia. 

Conrad Jacober, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology (Johns Hopkins University): one week 
For research into the Virginia banks’ role in the development and passage of the Southeastern Regional Banking Compact in 1984–85. 

Dr. Frederick Knight, Professor of History (Morehouse College): two weeks
For research into how the law enabled slavery’s expansion into the Deep South in the Antebellum period. 

Steven Krug, Ph.D. Candidate in History (University of Georgia): one week
For research into business risk assessment and mitigation by Virginia planters in the early republic period.

David Lacy, Ph.D. Candidate in History (University of Toledo): one week
For research into how enslaved Virginians used the legal system and law to gain opportunities for autonomy and freedom in the Antebellum period.

Emily Lampert, Ph.D. Candidate in History (Rice University): one week
For research into how British politicians, abolitionists, and planters perceived Virginia and Virginians between 1780 and 1860.

Allison McCann, Ph.D. Candidate in History (University of Miami): one week
For research into the Black American experience of resettlement and colonization in Liberia between 1790 and 1880.

Adam McNeil, Ph.D. Candidate in History (Rutgers University): one week 
For research into how enslaved Black women sought refuge with British military forces in the Tidewater in Virginia during the American Revolution.

Dr. Robert Murray, Associate Professor of History (Mercy University): one week
For research into the origins of the cultivation and processing of hemp in eighteenth-century Virginia. 

Dr. Diane Mutti Burke, Professor of History (University of Missouri–Kansas City): two weeks
For research into the experience of civilian refugees in Civil War Virginia. 

Syeda Rizvi, Ph.D. Candidate in American Literature (Western Michigan University): one week
For research into nineteenth-century representations of gender in James Taylor Ellyson’s manuscript Gothic literature. 

Meghan Townes, Ph.D. Candidate in American & New England Studies (Boston University): one week
For research into competing visions of Richmond’s future in post–Civil War art and visual culture communities.

Mary Báthory Vidaver, Ph.D. Candidate in History (University of Mississippi): one week
For research into religious and democratic ideas and the expansion of citizenship in the South between 1880 and 1964, focusing on Lucy Randolph Mason.

Dr. Emily Williams, Associate Professor of Archaeological Conservation (Durham University): one week
For research into the tombstone industry in nineteenth-century Virginia, focusing on the Couper Marble Works.

Dr. Claire Wolnisty, Associate Professor of History (Austin College): one week
For research into Texas’ role in the illegal international slave trade during the Civil War era, focusing on Virginia connections and participation.