Drs. Billing and Braham Awarded Research-Intensive Semesters

The College of Liberal Arts Research-Intensive Semester Awards for the 2025–26 academic year have been officially announced, and we have two winners from the History faculty—Dr. Samantha Billing and Dr. Abbass Braham. This initiative, recognized as a best practice at leading R1 universities, allows tenure-track Assistant Professors to devote an entire semester exclusively to research, free from teaching responsibilities.

Dr. Billing will spend her Research-Intensive Semester for Fall 2025 working on her book project Making the Miskitu: Indigenous Ethnogenesis in Colonial Central America.

Dr. Braham will spend his Research-Intensive Semester for Spring 2026 to support work on a manuscript preliminarily titled The Mu‘tazila: An Intellectual and Social History.

Other faculty selected for this opportunity are engaged in exciting and wide-ranging projects across the intellectual spectrum. The initiative is designed to enhance research productivity and support the progression toward promotion and tenure. The full list of awardees also includes Brenna Armstrong (Political Science), Lauren Auverset van Gerwen (Communications), Taylor Clement (English), Apoorva Ghosh  (Sociology, Anthropology, Human Development and Family Science), Kathe Managan (Sociology, Anthropology, Human Development and Family Science), Joel Rhone (English), and Meng Ru Shih (Criminal Justice).