Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies

Program on Conducting Archival Research

The Program on Conducting Archival Research has two components:

• a week long summer institute on archival research; and
• a Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in Cold War/Post-1945 International History.

SICAR

The Summer Institute on Conducting Archival Research (SICAR) is a five-day seminar in which Ph.D. students receive training in conducting archival research. Although archival research is an integral part of many academic disciplines, it is virtually never taught at the graduate level. In an effort to address this deficiency, the George Washington University began the Summer Institute in 2003. SICAR welcomes Ph.D. students from the US and abroad working on international relations and modern history. In 2013, the Summer Institute will continue to welcome participants from various disciplines including history, government and politics, international relations, sociology, anthropology, and public policy, as well as area and regional studies. Preference will be given to students who have defended their dissertation proposal and who are about to embark on archival research.

The 2013 workshop will be held from May 20-24 (students will need to arrive by May 19). The deadline for applications is January 15, 2013 . The application should include the application form, as well as a two-page proposal indicating how the workshop is important for your dissertation research, one letter of recommendation, and a curriculum vitae. Please send applications via e-mail to sicar@gwu.edu with the subject line reading "SICAR application." GW will cover the cost of student accomodations in Washington and will generally help cover the cost of transportation. For further information, please contact sicar@gwu.edu.

The Summer Institute is directed by the faculty of the GW Cold War Group and researchers at both the National Security Archive and the Cold War International History Project. SICAR is generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

SICAR 2011

Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in Cold War/Post-1945 International History

The deadline for the 2012-2013 Mellon Fellowship is January 15, 2013. For more information on applying click here.

Sinae Hyun has been selected as a Mellon Pre-doctoral Fellow in Cold War/Post-1945 International History for the 2012-2013 academic year. She is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Born and raised on Jeju Island, Republic of Korea, she came to the U.S. to pursue graduate studies focusing on Southeast Asian and Cold War history. Her research attempts to bring Thai local history into the larger context of indigenizing Cold War developments by investigating the interconnectedness between the postcolonial nation-building process and the U.S.' intervention into local politics in Southeast Asia.

Katharina Matro has been selected as a Mellon Pre-doctoral Fellow in Cold War/Post-1945 International History for the 2012-2013 academic year. She is a PhD Candidate in Eastern European History at Stanford University. Her dissertation project examines the transformation of rural communities in the territories accorded to Poland after World War II. In her work, she asks how war, forced migration, and regime change transformed life in the estate villages of the former Prussian nobility. She is also interested in examining how and whether the landscape in western Poland was changed in the immediate postwar period, and in what ways the environment and the climate challenged new Polish settlers as well as the Communist administration there. Katharina spent the 2011/2012 academic year working in Polish and German archives to collect material for her dissertation. So far, her research has been supported by doctoral fellowships from the ACLS, the German Historical Institute in Warsaw, and the Conference Group for Central European History among others. Katharina holds a B.A. in French and History from Amherst College and M.A.s from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Stanford University. Prior to beginning her studies at Stanford, Katharina worked at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington and at the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Free University in Berlin.