Mershon Mondays are in-house events for Mershon Center affiliates and their guests. They are a forum for relaxed sharing of field stories, work in progress, and reflections on methods and emerging areas of research. Mershon Mondays take place on most weeks of the semester, in Derby 1039. Lunch is served at 12:15, and discussion goes from 12:30 to 1:30. For autumn 2024 - spring 2026, Mershon postdocs will take the lead in programming Mershon Monday conversations. We welcome your suggestions for topics and presenters, and especially encourage active participation from grad students. Registration links will be sent via the Mershon in-house listservs.
Please see below for a current schedule and blog post summarizing previous Mershon Monday events.
Spring 2025
February 10, 2025 at 12:15pm (Derby Hall 1039)
Max Woodworth, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Geography & Director, Institute for Chinese Studies
- Max Woodworth will discuss the origins, nature, and geopolitical implications of Taiwan’s postwar military housing settlements.
February 24, 2025 at 12:15pm (Derby Hall 1039)
Frederick Chen, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Political Science
- Frederick Chen will speak about firm nationality and local government preferences for foreign direct investment based on original survey research.
March 3, 2025 at 12:15pm (Derby Hall 1039)
Jacien Carr, Ph.D., Assistant Director, Center for African Studies
- TBD
March 17, 2025 at 12:15pm (Derby Hall 1039)
Emily Hardick, Ph.D. candidate, African history
- Emily Hardick will discuss her dissertation research, which examines the relationship between the international mobility of performers and cultural diplomacy in the colonial and postcolonial Democratic Republic of Congo.
March 24, 2025 at 12:15pm (Derby Hall 1039)
Erin Moore, Ph.D., Dr. Carl F. Asseff Assistant Professor, Anthropology and the History of Medicine
- TBD
March 31, 2025 at 12:15pm (Derby Hall 1039)
Laurie Georges, Ph.D. candidate, International Relations and Comparative Politics
- Laurie Georges will discuss her research on the feedback loop of erasure—the process of removing traces of peoples from territories—more specifically in the context of the Ottoman Empire/Turkey and Armenia/Azerbaijan from the 19th century to the present.
April 7, 2025 at 12:15pm (Derby Hall 1039)
Christopher Leger, Ph.D. candidate, Russian and Eastern European History
- Christopher Legerwill discuss Soviet Latvian propaganda and how it interfaces with the Latvian past and present. He will discuss how Latvian nation building and 21st century geopolitics selectively root in the socialist past while preparing for a second round of being at the forefront of a Cold War.
April 14, 2025 at 12:15pm (Derby Hall 1039)
Cameron Givens, Ph.D. candidate broadly interested in wartime, conspiracy, and the politics of race and citizenship in the early twentieth-century United States.
- Cameron Givens will discuss some key changes in the legal architecture of white supremacy in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. Specifically, he will talk about how shifts in naturalization and immigration law responded to an assumed lesson of the conflict: that racially immutable characteristics predisposed non-white groups to disloyal, anti-American behavior.
