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Addison Dalton
Greetings. My name is Addison Dalton and I am a first-year student in the Latin American Studies graduate program. Presently, I do not have a concrete research focus, although issues of sustainability and development are of particular interest. I hail from Sycamore, Virginia, a place so small it doesn't have its own zip code (so we borrow Gretna's). My undergraduate days were spent at Ferrum College in Franklin County, Virginia; there I studied Spanish, Political Science, and Environmental Science. For several years after graduation, I taught Spanish in Patrick County, Virginia, before moving to Lynchburg to work with Legal Aid for a brief time. Then, despite having become an expert in poverty law (I kid myself), I decided to return to the world of teaching. But before doing so, I'm here at Tech to study a part of the world that holds much in the way of intrigue, excitement, conflict, beauty, and promise. Cheers!

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Eliza Bourque Dandridge
Eliza is a second-year graduate student in the Area Studies program at Virginia Tech. She earned a bachelor's degree from the College of William & Mary in Literary and Cultural Studies with a minor in French and will receive her master's degree in History in the spring of 2008. Her current research interests include post-World War II Europe and French bande dessinée. She plans to pursue a doctorate in French cultural history after leaving Tech.

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Marina Falasca
Marina is a first-year graduate student in the Area Studies program at Virginia Tech. She is originally from Argentina, where she got her degree in teaching English as a foreign language in 2004. She was a Fulbright foreign language teaching assistant at South Dakota State University during 2005-2006 and got her M.A.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction at SDSU in May 2007. Her current research interests include Latin America and critical pedagogy.

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Abe Gibson
Abe received a bachelor's degree in English with a concentration in Creative Writing and minors in Astronomy, Environmental Studies, and History from James Madison University in 2005. He is currently a second-year graduate student at Virginia Tech and will receive an M.A. in History along with a graduate certificate in Science and Technology Studies (STS) in 2008. His current research focuses on the history of science and, in particular, the history of biology and astronomy. His master's thesis will investigate the social response to Darwin's theory of common descent in twentieth-century America.

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Claire Ihlendorf
Claire got her undergraduate degree in Math and Spanish from Virginia Tech and is currently in her second year in the Area Studies program. As an undergrad, she was a member of the Math Club, Alpha Phi, and Phi Beta Kappa and also studied abroad in both Spain and Mexico. When not watching movies (i.e. doing research for her thesis on Mexican film), she runs the occasional marathon, teaches Spanish, parties with her friends, cooks, and reads books in her hammock.

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Paul Lee
Paul is from Suwon, Korea, a city located about 20 miles south of Seoul. He attended the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he got interested in American history and received his undergraduate degree in History. Paul's primary interests are in the history of Colonial America and of the early American republic. He entered the Virginia Tech graduate program in the fall of 2006 and is currently researching  British troops in the American colonies from 1765 to 1774. When not working on his thesis, he plays the piano and hopes to hold a small recital before leaving Tech.

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Jason Loss
Jason Loss is a second-year student in Tech's M.A. program in History. A native of Fairfax County, Virginia, he earned his B.A. in History from the University of Mary Washington in the fall of 2005, with a thesis about the 1965 University of Michigan Teach-In and subsequent events. Current research interests include the history of Jews and Judaism in America, the 1960s Antiwar movement, and the New Left and New Right movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

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Robert Murray
Robert hails from Midway, Kentucky, a small town in the Bluegrass near Lexington. He received his undergraduate degree in History and Government from Centre College in Danville,  Kentucky. While at Centre, Robert was a member of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity and also studied abroad in London. He is in his second year of the History graduate program at Tech and is the current president of the HGSA. He is predominantly interested in early nineteenth-century American history and is currently conducting comparative research on Russian emancipationists and Southern abolitionists.

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Lisa Nash
Lisa is a second-year graduate student in History. Originally from Salem, Virginia, Lisa received her undergraduate degree from Radford University with a double major in History and Social Science and a minor in Anthropology. Her research centers around nineteenth-century America in general and women and their changing domestic roles in particular. After graduation, Lisa plans to teach at the secondary level.

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Juan Carlos Sanchez-Sierra
Juan Carlos hails from Bogotà, Colombia, and is currently a graduate student in the ASPECT program at Virginia Tech. He will receive a Master's in History in the spring of 2008.

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Sam Thomason
Sam is currently a second-year graduate student in the History Department at Virginia Tech, where he has spent the past five years. He originally planned on majoring in Computer Science, but wisely changed to History at the end of his Freshman year. He is currently conducting research on the Congreve rocket, an early nineteenth-century type of British rocket artillery.

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Jenny Vipperman
Jenny is originally from Pulaski, Virginia, a small town forty minutes southwest of the Virginia Tech campus. She received her undergraduate degree from Radford University, where she majored in History and minored in Art History. She currently works in Special Collections at the Virginia Tech Library, assisting with the processing of archival collections. She entered the History program in the fall of 2006 and will receive her master's degree in spring 2008. She recently completed an internship at the South Florida Collections Management Center in Everglades National Park and plans to pursue a career in archiving after leaving Virginia Tech.