---
title: "Research | History, Political Science and International Studies"
url: "/academics/kakos/departments/hist-pol-sci-intl/research"
type: page
date: 2026-06-05
updated: 2026-06-05
---

# Research | History, Political Science and International Studies

# Research

Our best students are eligible to apply for one-on-one research opportunities with faculty. The [Jasper Summer Research Scholars](/academics/research/student-research/summer/jasper) program and the [Branigan Scholars Grant](/academics/research/student-research/summer/branigan) fund student summer research projects. These competitive experiences look great on resumes when applying to graduate schools or jobs.

## Branigan Scholars Grant

- 2023 Cathy Radko (HIST/PSYC), “Cultural Impact on Horror Video Games in Japan and the West,” (Droubie)
- 2022 Marin Bultena (HIST/INTL), “Saving (some) Women: Race, Gender, and Class in Interwar Egypt, 1919-1939," (Takla)
- Adea Kukaj (INTL/POSC), “Wartime Violence Against Women: The Impact and Legacy in the Context of Kosovo,” (Nelson)
- 2022 Jessica O’Brien (PSYC/POSC) “Ranked Choice Voting as a Superior Electoral System for Increasing Voter Turnout among Young Voters,” (Groarke/Jayawickreme)
- 2021 Reese Hollister (HIST/INTL), “Photography, Identity, Power: William Henry Jackson and the American Colonial Gaze,” (Droubie)
- 2021 Charles Ohene-Karikari (HIST), “Semper Praesens: Black People in the Roman Empire,” (Edwards)
- 2020 Marshall Strawbridge (POSC), “The Impact of the Department of Justice Enforcing the NVRA,” (Groarke)
- 2017 Nicholas Matson (HIST), “Movement across Borders: Digitizing and Analyzing the Windsor Civil War Census,” Branigan Scholar research program. - Credited as part of a recent submission to History of the Family journal article, forthcoming.
- 2016 John Evans, “Searching for the Historicity of Arthurian Legend,” (Edwards)
- 2015 Kimberly Hickey (HIST), “Before Mad Men: Portrayals of Women in Advertising, 1950-1959,” (Droubie)
- 2014 Andrea Castano (HIST), "The History of Sex Trafficking and How the Past is Relevant to Today’s Policies" (Edwards)

## Egan Award

**An award given annually for the best student essay in the liberal arts. The winning essay is published in Logos the following year.**

- 2023 Joshua Whipple, “How Cold War Tensions in the Far East Led to the Destruction of Korean Airlines Flight 007,” Honorable Mention
- 2021 Meredith Taylor, “Imagining and Combatting the “Militant Homosexual”: Hard Borders as the Foundation and Instrument of Anita Bryant’s “Crusade,”
- 2019 Reilly Rebhahn, “Daughter of the Dawn: How Blockbuster Westerns are Anti-Preservation of History.”
- 2018 Victoria Thomas, “Medieval Women's Sexuality: Men's Expectations and Perceptions of It,” (Edwards)
- 2018 Nicholas Matson, “Grant’s Special Message: The Rhetoric of an Unfit President,” Honorable Mention.
- 2016 Courtney Canavan, “Grandstanding in the Schoolhouse Door: A Gesture of Symbolic Defiance and One Man’s Unending Pursuit of Glory.”

 

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Undergraduate research in the History, Political Science and International Studies Department at Manhattan University, including grants and the Egan Award.