University of Minnesota Art History PhD Student is Recipient of Center for Austrian Studies Summer Research Fellowship

Jasmin Pannier, a PhD student in the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota, is the recipient of the 2025 CAS Summer Graduate Research Fellowship! 

Pannier's research focuses on the production, exhibition, and preservation of materials created by soldiers fighting on the front lines for the Allied and Central Powers during World War I, particularly on the Western Front in France and Flanders. 

The Center's selection committee was particularly impressed with Pannier's transnational approach to material history, which reframes trench art as a product of the larger, and global, wartime economy. Pannier's linguistic competency to complete archival research in English, French, German and Russian was also important for the selection committee, and is vital for the study of trench art in World War I. 

Pannier expands on her research interests further by stating, "I am especially interested in trench art—decorative and commemorative objects made from spent military materials such as shell casings, bullets, and scrap metal. While often viewed as the handiwork of individual soldiers, these objects were also crafted by civilians, prisoners of war, colonial laborers, and veterans in rehabilitation.” 

Pannier will first be traveling to London to conduct research at the Imperial War Museum, which houses the largest collection of trench art, then on to the National Archives in Kew, and the Sheffield Local Studies Library where she will look at trench art objects firsthand and review wartime documents on souvenir regulation, scrap recovery, and labor. These materials, she says, will help lay the foundation for her dissertation, is excited to dive into these objects and see what they reveal.

Congratulations, Jasmin!