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Kean History Alumni Update

This past summer, Dr. Bellitto caught up in the UK with two Kean History alumni as they pursued graduate studies abroad. He asked them to reflect on their current work and how Kean History prepared them for their next steps.



Elizabeth Thorsen, University of York


After taking classes on the Middle Ages with Dr. Bellitto, I decided that I wanted to pursue the field further and get a master’s degree in Medieval History. After deciding that I wanted to experience history as much as I wanted to learn about it, I applied to several schools in the United Kingdom and ended up at the University of York in England. In grad school, I took a mixture of content and skills classes.


Kean’s History Honors program prepared me for the discussion-based content courses, especially the heavy reading. In addition, Dr. Bellitto’s and Dr. Argote-Freyere’s papers helped me hone my writing skills, especially relating to being concise. Access to Kean’s archive material and the Livingston Booklist project also provided me with experience working with documents, which made my Latin and Paleography skills courses less daunting.


Studying in the United Kingdom provided me with several opportunities to see medieval ruins, explore castles, and experience history in a way that I had never before. I was even able to travel to Paris and stand in the courtyard where the woman I am writing my master’s dissertation on was burned at the stake in 1310.


Grad school has allowed me to hone and further develop the skills that I had already acquired during my undergraduate experience at Kean, and the opportunities I was given to research, write, and present history through the History Honors program prepared me for rigorous grad school courses. As I am completing my MA thesis, I will also be starting a job teaching US History 1 at the Freshman Academy of Perth Amboy High School. In the future, I hope to return to school and achieve an MLIS so that I can become an archivist.



Michael Collins, University of Oxford


After completing a dual B.A. in History and Political Science at Kean in 2014, I earned an M.A. from Rutgers in 2018 before being accepted as a DPhil candidate to Oxford in 2020. My dissertation is focused on the subject of what British officials in West Africa in the nineteenth century thought the political significance of their work. There’s reams of papers on what this or that Marquis or Earl thought of the imperial project – I want to know what the men carrying it out thought their duty was and how their sensibilities shaped the empire itself.

At present, I have two years remaining in my program before graduation. Studying takes plenty of time right now and I have difficulty imagining exactly what will come after. All I know is this – I want to continue researching and teaching the history of the British Empire and the history of Africa, whether that be in the United States or overseas. There are many unorganized archives in Africa though and, if my teaching skills are not in immediate need, I would be glad to assist in the process of cataloguing them.

I genuinely regard my time at Kean as essential to preparing me for this moment. I was not a good student coming out of high school. Through the faculty there, who were always there for me, I gained an appreciation of the fact that good work requires hard work and risks. Sometimes, you have to go digging for material that was never digitized. Sometimes, you have to make an argument that challenges the accepted understanding. Patience, perspiration, and a family of very generous editors will take you farther than we tend to think!

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