Career Development Blog

At the time of this interview Simon Brown was in the fifth year of the program, where he continues to study early modern European history. He focuses on British history between the Reformation and Enlightenment, and his dissertation examines the history of “useful knowledge” as an aspiration and project from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century in England and its empire. He is particularly interested in the way that both Protestant theology and political economy informed how people thought about what makes knowledge useful in the period, when many began to insist that all...

Adrianne Francisco received her Ph.D. in 2015 and started a career as an independent school teacher 3 days after submitting her dissertation, which looked at the relationship between American colonial education and Philippine nationalism during the years of direct U.S. rule, from 1900-1935. Currently she is a Social Studies teacher at Drew School in San Francisco. Besides teaching, she advises Drew's APIDA (Asian Pacific Islander Desi American) student affinity group, mentors new faculty, and serves as an 11th-grade advisor.

Are there any general...

Berkeley’s History graduate students are fortunate to have so much exposure in the undergraduate classroom and a culture that values pedagogy and encourages the cultivation of teaching personas. But our training as teachers is still, in some ways, constraining. While we’re given degrees of freedom to explore and understand ourselves as teachers in discussion sections, courses like R1Bs or 103s aren’t always easy to come by – a more unfettered freedom to craft lessons and experiment with pedagogy isn’t always readily available. We might also be left to frequently wonder how exactly to gauge...

Jason Rozumalski finished his Ph.D. in Early Modern European History at Berkeley in 2017, where he taught European History, Art History, and Economic Theory. He is currently the Global Programs Manager at the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), which is housed at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he is also a post-doctoral fellow.

Derek: Please tell us a bit about your work since Berkeley. How'd you land at the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes? and what are the most interesting projects you've worked...