Graduate Fellows 2026-27
The Institute for European Studies aims to become a focal point at Cornell for an interdisciplinary European Studies research community.
The IES Fellows will advance their research and contribute to the European Studies community by attending and engaging in IES-hosted talks, and by organizing and taking part in collective activities such as a graduate research workshop or discussion group. The Institute supports these activities with a small research stipend to each Fellow. IES Fellows also receive priority for IES research and travel fellowships. Meet the 2026-27 cohort.
Nick Brattoli
Duncan Eaton
Duncan Eaton is a PhD candidate in the History Department. His research is concerned with the economic and political history of 19th and 20th century Europe, with a focus on the economic challenges stemming from the dissolution of Austria-Hungary. His dissertation research analyzes the political economy of interwar Czechoslovakia in order to understand the proliferation of autonomist politics among rural Slovaks, particularly following the Great Depression.
Kaitlin Findlay
Director's Fellow
Kaitlin Findlay is a doctoral candidate in the Cornell History Department. Her current research examines forced displacement, humanitarianism, liberal internationalism, and memory in the mid-twentieth century.
Filip Galic
Filip Galić studies the evolving relationship between capitalist ideology post empire — as read through transnational circuits of capital, expertise, and architectural production — and the articulations of national consciousness and sovereignty in post-Ottoman Non-Aligned geographies throughout the 20th century, focusing on Yugoslav–MENA relations. Members of his doctoral committee are Esra Akcan, Tracy McNulty, and Raymond Craib.
Prior to doctoral studies at Cornell, Galić received a postgraduate degree with distinction in History and Critical Thinking from the Architectural Association in London, and B.Arch. and M.Arch. from the University of Split, FGAG. He is a licensed architect and has practiced at Alison Brooks Architects, Bjarke Ingels Group, Powerhouse Company, and Joan Alomar Arquitectura.
Thomas Gareau-Paquette
Spencer Hadley
Spencer Hadley (he/him/his) is a PhD candidate in the Department of German Studies. His dissertation project carries the provisional heading “Jazz Poetry in German Keys: Race, Gender, Sound and Transnational Exchange Since 1945.” It involves 20th and 21st century German-language poetry, prose and performance and is informed by Literary and Cultural Studies, (Jazz and Popular) Music and Sound studies, and Black European Studies.
Aysegul Kilinc
Ayşegül Kılınç is a PhD student and Fulbright Fellow at Cornell University. Her research focuses on the intersection of climate policy, trade, and economics, with a particular emphasis on the effects of the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. Beyond her academic work, she enjoys spending time in nature and crafting, and is passionate about sharing Turkish culture.
Angela Kothe
Angela Kothe is a third-year PhD Student in the Department of Government. Her research interests include Queer politics and religion in Europe and the United States. She is currently developing a project that explores the political economy of Queer identity formation in post-War England.
Kaori Quan
Kaori Quan is a PhD student in French History. Her research centers on the intellectual history of Revolutionary France, with a particular focus on Parisian insurrections and the ways in which the process of documenting them influenced the trajectory of both modern democracy and history-writing.
Georgy Tarasenko
Georgy Tarasenko is a PhD student in the Department of Government at Cornell University. His major field of study is Comparative Politics, with minor fields in Political Thought and Methods. Previously, he was a researcher and lecturer at the Center for Institutional Studies at HSE University in Moscow and the Digital Humanities Center at ITMO University in Saint Petersburg.
Georgy is generally interested in freedom as both a theoretical and empirical phenomenon, with a particular focus on non-democratic and illiberal politics. One of his research agendas examines wartime politics, specifically investigating Russian mercenary violence in Africa and the impact of casualties in the Russo-Ukrainian war on public opinion. He explores these questions using various interdisciplinary computational approaches, including statistics, machine learning, experiments, archival methods, and GIS.
Xinyu H. Zhang
Director's Fellow
Xinyu H. Zhang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature and holds an M.A. in Icelandic Literature from the University of Iceland. He is a reader of critical theories and Far North literature (Nordic-Scandinavian texts, especially those from Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland). He seeks to learn from the poignant dialectics between literary history and natural history in narratives of uneasy settlement in the Far North. He has published on the production of contemporary Icelandic novels in relation to a pervasive “global” atmosphere of techno-environmental-economic anxiety, which is entangled with Iceland’s own postcoloniality. He has also written on the question of relation itself, through the elliptical encounters between Jacques Derrida and Édouard Glissant. He has translated many works of Icelandic literature into Chinese.
Past Institute for European Studies Graduate Fellows
| 2025-26 | 2024-25 | 2023-24 |
|---|---|---|
| Frances Cayton (Spring) | Alican Taylan | Chris Mingo |
| Duncan Eaton | Amelia Arsenault | Emre Susamci |
| Georgy Tarasenko | Angela Kothe | Francis Cayton |
| Kaitlin Findlay | Chiara Visentin | Judith Tauber |
| Spencer Hadley | Chris Mingo | Morton Wan |
| Rachel Horner (Fall) | Frances Cayton | Savannah Caldwell |
| Angela Kothe | Madeleine Lemos | Stefan Ivanovski |
| Madeleine Lemos Director's Fellow | Maria Luisa Palumbo | Thari Zweers |
| Julia Sebastien | Matt Finck | |
| Nora Siena | Nora Siena | |
| Chiara Visentin Director's Fellow | Priyanka Sen | |
| Xinyu H. Zhang | Rachel Horner | |
| Victoria Phil Sorensen |