Professor Kevin J. Murphy, 2025-2026
Kevin Murphy earned his Ph.D. from Stony Brook University in New York. His dissertation examines the role of public and private oaths in establishing solidarity and authority across the British Atlantic, and especially during the American Revolution. In 2020-2021, he was a dissertation fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He has presented his research in three different countries and has been cited multiple times in peer-reviewed works, in addition to his own peer-reviewed publications. As a McCormick Center Fellow he will revise his manuscript for publication, focusing on the
American Revolution, and extend his research using sources housed at the New York State Archives and elsewhere in the Capitol Region.
Professor Kristina Benham, 2024-2025
Kristina Benham earned her Ph.D. in history at Baylor University, Texas. Her dissertation "American Exodus, American Identity: Biblical Texts and National Identities from the American Revolution to the Civil War" examines how early Americans interpreted national identity through biblical ideas. As a McCormick Center Fellow she taught early American legal history, drafted a prospectus for her book project, and taught McCormick Summer Scholars how to conduct research in the Library of Congress Chronicling America collection of historic newspapers, using the digital humanities open-access project America’s Public Bible. Students developed a spreadsheet of all the references to the biblical Exodus narrative in American public debate.
Professor yiyun huang, 2023-2024
Yiyun Huang earned his Ph.D. in history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His dissertation “Medicinal Tea: Global Cultural Transfer and a Vast Early America” focuses on Sino-American cultural relations during the long eighteenth century and his research interest include medicine in early America, history of commodity, as well as global cultural transfer. As a McCormick Center Fellow he taught the history of medicine and worked on revising his manuscript for publication. He also mentored McCormick Summer Scholars in a research project that analyzing manuscripts from Harvard University Library’s “Worlds of Change” online collections on early North America and the New York State Library Manuscripts and Special Collections. The students built a database of medicinal use of tea by medical practitioners and ordinary residents of colonial and revolutionary New York.
Professor elana j. krischer, 2022-2023
Elana J. Krischer earned her PhD in History from the University at Albany, SUNY. She is working on a manuscript that traces the ways the Senecas, government officials, missionaries, and land companies constructed western expansion in New York from the late eighteenth through the nineteenth century. As a McCormick Center Fellow she worked on revising her manuscript for publication and mentored McCormick Summer Scholars' research in an ongoing digital history project on western expansion in New York. The project involved collecting data from approximately 34 boxes at the New York State Archives and digitized materials from the SUNY Fredonia Archives and Special Collections and copy the data into spreadsheets for use in GIS.
professor kieran j. o'keefe, 2021-2022
Kieran J. O’Keefe earned his Ph.D. in History from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He studies the effects of violence and forced migration on the Loyalist communities of New York’s Hudson Valley, and his scholarship has appeared in New York History, the Journal of Religious History, The International History Review, and the Journal of the American Revolution. As a McCormick Center Fellow he worked on revising his manuscript for publication and mentored McCormick Summer Scholars' research in the pension records of New York’s Revolutionary War veterans to understand the men who fought in the war, their
background, their experiences, and their post-war lives.
Professor AUrelia Aubert, 2019-2020
Aurelia Aubert earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of Florida. A native French speaker, Dr. Aubert's dissertation examines the life of Achille Murat, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte and planter in territorial Florida, to examine the transatlantic connections between the U.S. South and the Bonapartist Empire in the Age of Revolution. She has presented her work at a number of academic conferences including the Southern Historical Association, the Florida Historical Society, the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies, and the British American Nineteenth Century Historians’ Association. As a McCormick Center Fellow she mentored McCormick Summer Scholars students in a digital history project tracing the Marquis de Lafayette's 1824 tour of the Capital Region.
Professor Andrew R. Beaupre, 2018-2019
Andrew R. Beaupre earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology with a concentration in Historical Archeology from the College of William and Mary. He archeological research focuses on the Lake Champlain Richelieu River Valley, and the majority of his primary field research was completed at the site of Fort Saint-Jean in Saint Jean-sur-Richelieu, Québec. As a McCormick Center Fellow he taught new courses in Native American history and Historical Archeology. He also mentored two McCormick Summer Scholars on an archeological dig in Schenectady, New York.