Tomás Arce | Graduate Student, Anthropology

Tomás Arce earned his undergraduate degree in Anthropology from the National University of Colombia in 2016. Since then, he has participated in multiple archaeological research and site management projects in Colombia, focused on understanding and conserving preceramic populations and sites located on the Bogotá high plateau and surrounding areas. He obtained a master’s degree in Quaternary and Prehistory from the University of Ferrara, Italy, where he conducted a technological and use-wear analysis of the lithic assemblage from the Roberto Amador site in Nicaragua. As part of this research, he developed an experimental archaeology program that enabled the interpretation of microscopic use-wear traces on lithic artifacts through high-power microscopy. His research interests include lithic technology, use-wear analysis, experimental archaeology, and geospatial approaches to identify spatial use patterns among early human groups. His current research will focuses on the exploration of early human settlement in northwestern Colombia, particularly in the Darién region and coastal plains of north Colombia.

Paula Cornejo-Abarca | Graduate Student, Sociology

Paula Cornejo-Abarca is a Chilean Interdisciplinary sociologist and PhD student in Sociology at Texas A&M University. Her research examines gender, organizations, and social inequality, with a particular focus on sexual harassment in higher education, gender discrimination, work-family policies, motherhood, and caregiving. Her scholarship explores how institutional structures and policies shape opportunities, well-being, and inequality across workplaces, families, and educational settings. Her work has been published in Gender, Work & Organization, the Journal of Industrial Relations, among others. Through her research, teaching, and service, she seeks to advance more equitable and just organizations, societies, and public policies. 

Joel Criswell | Graduate Student, History

Joel Criswell is a PhD student in History at Texas A&M University, studying the intersection of race, religion, and social perceptions of sanity in the abolition movement. His research explores how many abolitionists, inspired by the Second Great Awakening, contended with the status quo maintained by the white elite and the burgeoning field of psychiatry. Previous work focuses on how U.S. society depicts Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT), a procedure for depression that involves sending an electric current through a patient’s brain, as a mechanism to restrict freedom. This research was included in a report to the Texas Health and Human Services in support of a display at the Bob Bullock Museum on ECT in Texas Mental Health Hospitals. 

Bruce Ferrell | Graduate Student, History

Bruce Ferrell is a PhD student in the History Department at Texas A&M University. Bruce retired from the U.S. Army as a Colonel after serving 28 years in uniform. During his career, Bruce served in a variety of combat arms units and major commands including deployments to Iraq in 2005 and Afghanistan in 2010 and serving in strategic level headquarters on multiple occasions. As such, Bruce is a highly knowledgeable practitioner in military strategy. After his retirement, Bruce continued to serve the Army as a Department of the Army civilian for five years, teaching advanced military operations to mid-grade officers at the Army’s Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. 

For his dissertation, Bruce is comparing the ideas about strategy-making from the U.S. military with those of the corporate sector. While these two fields both use the concept of strategy, they are conceptually divided by significant differences in terminology and approaches. Bruce seeks to bring these two fields into intellectual conversation with each other by researching how businesses adopted strategic concepts from the US military in the postwar era and how the two fields approached strategic education and experimentation during the Cold War and up into the post-Cold War era. His research combines sources and methodologies from military history, Cold War history, the study of grand strategy, and business academia. 

Jesse Flecha| Graduate Student, History

Jesse Flecha is a Ph.D. Student in the Department of History. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in History from Texas A&M University—Central Texas in 2024, graduating summa cum laude. His research examines U.S.-Latin American relations during the Reconstruction era, with particular attention to the political, social, and legal consequences of these interactions across the Americas. Jesse’s research has received support from the American Historical Association, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library, the Race and Ethnic Studies Institute, and the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research. 

His master’s thesis, titled “International Slavery, International Freedom: The Grant Administration’s Effort to End American Slavery Abroad,” explores how the federal government and American public responded to revelations that U.S. citizens continued to participate in slavery in Brazil and Cuba despite the restrictions imposed by the Thirteenth Amendment. The project challenges conventional interpretations of the Thirteenth Amendment by demonstrating how American slavery persisted through transnational networks beyond the borders of the United States. 

In his dissertation, Jesse seeks to further explore these topics, particularly by examining Black and Latino perspectives and analyzing how these transnational struggles shaped the collective memory of Reconstruction. 

Rachel Miller | Graduate Student, History

Rachel Green Miller is a PhD candidate in the History Department at Texas A&M University, where she also earned her BA and MA in History. Her area of study is Early Modern England. Rachel’s research focuses on the contributions of women in the English Protestant Reformation, notably how women participated in and influenced political, cultural, and religious change. 

Adisson Wright | Graduate Student, History

Adisson Wright is a PhD student in the Department of History at Texas A&M University. She specializes in Holocaust liberation and memory. Her research considers how concentration camp liberators became active participants in the institutionalization of American Holocaust memorialization. Prior to Texas A&M, Adisson graduated with honors from Liberty University, earning a Bachelor of Science in History, with minors in Military History and Government.  

Alongside her research endeavors, Adisson pursues public history. She has been an intern at both the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia, and the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Virginia. Her most recent projects entailed creating a digital exhibit for Remembering and Honoring the Aggie Experience and a physical exhibit, Personifying Freedom: Highlighting the Legacies of African American Holocaust Liberators and Witnesses for the Brazos Valley African American Museum located in Bryan, Texas. Adisson was recently awarded an internship at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.