Recent Dissertations in Related Fields
The University of Minnesota has a tradition of training students in the field. UMN has produced perhaps more PhDs working in AIIS than any institution in the world. Since 1995, at least 79 students have graduated with PhDs across a range of disciplines whose work wholly or substantially falls into the field of American Indian and Indigenous studies, having been advised by our core and affiliated faculty.
Visit our Placements page for more detailed information on the careers alumni have pursued.
Lennixx Granados Bad Moccasin (Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe)
“The Grief Protocol: Oceti Sakowin Kinship and Storytelling Across a Haunted Multiverse”
Department: American Studies
Advisors: Jean O'Brien and Christopher Pexa (Harvard)
Áila O'Loughlin (Sámi)
“Thinking Through Kinship: An Introduction to Indigenous Kinship Ethics”
Department: Philosophy
Advisors: Sarah Holtman and Tamara Fakhoury
Joshua Althoff
“Vincennes in Myaamionki: A History of Memory of the George Rogers Clark National Historical Park in Miami Homelands”
Department: History
Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor, Knox College
Advisor: Jean O'Brien and David Chang
Ashton Pemapanik Dunkley (Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape)
"The Place We Stayed a Long Time:” A Nanticoke and Lenape History of Race, Recognition, & Remembering in the Tidewaters of the Delaware Bay
Department: American Studies
Placement: Assistant Professor of Black and Indigenous Studies, Department of Black Studies & American Studies Program, Georgetown University
Advisor: Jean O'Brien
Mskwaankwad Rice (Anishinaabe, Waasaaksing First Nation)
"Verbal Order and Clause Typing in Ojibwe"
Department: Linguistics
Placement: Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at Lac Courte Orielle Ojibwe University; Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Indigenous Studies, University of Manitoba, beginning Fall 2026
Advisor: Nora Livesay
Jonnelle Walker (Fond du Lac Ojibwe)
"Footnotes of a Misaabekong Rugrat"
Department: American Studies
Placement: Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies, University of Minnesota-Duluth
Advisor: Jean O'Brien
Phoebe Young (Saginaw Chippewa descendant)
"Our Original Instructions: Indigenous Food Sovereignty and Anishinaabe Youth Education in the Twin Cities"
Department: American Studies
Placement Regional Communications and Organizing Program Manager, Midwest Environmental Justice Network
Advisor: Jean O'Brien
Kaylen James (Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska)
"Fame, Technology, and New Media: The Technologies and Anxieties of Settler Colonialism"
Department: American Studies
Placement: Charles A. Eastman Postdoctoral Fellow, Dartmouth College
Advisor: Jean O'Brien
Jayne Kinney
“’The Heart of the Nation’: The Roles of Female Leadership in Mandan and Hidatsa Resistance and Resilience”
Department: History
Placement: College Possible
Advisors: Jean O’Brien and David Chang
E Ornelas
"Speculating Abolition: Alternative Models of Redress in Black and Indigenous Feminist Speculative Fiction"
Department: Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies
Placement: Assistant Professor, Dartmouth College
Advisors: Aren Aizura and Jigna Desai
Catherine ʻĪmaikalani Ulep (Kanaka Maoli)
“Makaʻāinana Wāhine: Clothing, Power, and the Sex-for-Gods Trade in Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i”
Department: History
Placement Assistant Professor, Whitman College
Advisor: David Chang
Amber Annis (Cheyenne River Sioux)
“’The use of your reservation is important’: The Militarization and Exploitation of Lakota Land and Lakota Sovereignty of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe”
Department: American Studies
Placement: Director, Native American Initiatives, Minnesota Historical Society
Advisors: Jean O’Brien and Kevin Murphy
Adrian V. Chavana
“Reclaiming Tribal Identity in the Land of the Spirit Waters: The Tāp Pīlam Coahuiltecan Nation”
Department: History
Placement: Assistant Professor, Department of History, Texas A&M University
Advisor: David Chang
Caroline Doenmez
“The Medicine We Carry: Indigenous Women’s Arts of Creation, Care, and Birthing Sovereignty along the Red River”
Department: Anthropology
Placement: Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Michigan State University
Advisors: Hoon Song and Jean O’Brien
Sarah Pawlicki
“’I Hear That God Saith Work’: Mortality and Labor in Massachusetts, 1619-1680”
Department: History
Placement: National Historic Landmarks Women’s History Postdoctoral Fellow
Advisors: Jean O’Brien and Katharine Gerbner
Kristi Rudelius-Palmer
“Stories as Theories: Illuminating Human Rights Education through the Narratives of Human Rights Educators”
Department: Comparative International Development Education
Placement: Fulbright Specialist, The Fulbright Program
Advisor: Elizabeth Sumida Huaman
Jason Herbert
“Beast of Many Names: Cattle, Conflict, and the Transformation of Indigenous Florida, 1519-1858”
Department: History
Placement: National Park Service
Advisors: David Chang and Katharine Gerbner
Hana Maruyama
“What Remains: Japanese American World War II Incarceration in Relation to American Indian Dispossession”
Department: American Studies
Placement: Department of History, University of Connecticut
Advisors: Juliana Hu Pegues and Erika Lee
Elan Pochedley (Citizen Potawatomi Nation)
“Neshnabé Ethics and Innovations: Intergenerational Expressions of Reciprocity between the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and their Other-Than-Human Relatives”
Department: Anthropology
Placement: Assistant Professor, Department of Religion, Michigan State University
Advisors: Hoon Song and Jean O’Brien
Macey Flood
“Simple Medicines: Land, Health, and Power in the 19th-Century Ojibwe Western Great Lakes”
Department: History of Medicine
Placement: Visiting Scholar, Institute of Bioethics & Health Humanities, UTBM, Galveston
Advisors: Jennifer Gunn and Dominique Tobbell
Kai Pyle (Métis)
“Folks Like Us: Anishinaabe Two-Spirit Kinship and Memory Across Time and Space”
Department: American Studies
Placement: Assistant Professor, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Advisors: Jean O’Brien and Juliana Hu Pegues