Graduate Student Bios

Melissa Reyes is a first-year PhD student in American History. Her research interests include placemaking, public history, and transnational urban history, with a particular focus on Mexican communities on the East Coast. She received her B.A. in Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies, with a minor in Geography, from Dartmouth College, where she was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. Her undergraduate honors thesis examined Mexican migration from Puebla, Mexico, to Passaic, New Jersey. Her thesis received Dartmouth’s Interdisciplinary Studies Prize for Best Honors Thesis and the Stellhorn & Waldron New Jersey Studies Student Award for Best Undergraduate Thesis from the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance. She was also honored by the Government of Puebla, Mexico, with the Premio Carmen Serdán “Mujeres que Transforman” (“Women Who Transform”) Award. She is a proud recipient of the Beinecke Scholarship.