2024 Mollie Holman Award and Faculty of Arts John Rickard Prize for Outstanding PhD Thesis
Congratulations to Historical Studies PhD graduate Dr Isabelle Laskaris who has been awarded the 2024 Mollie Holman Award for her thesis titled "As Life from the Dead": New England Slave Resistance, 1650-1800.
Awarded to a maximum of 10 doctoral students, the Mollie Holman Award is among the highest academic honours the University bestows, marking recipients as researchers of the highest order.
Dr Laskaris has also been awarded the Faculty of Arts John Rickard Prize for Outstanding PhD Thesis. The $5,000 Faculty of Arts Prize is endowed by the late Emeritus Professor John Rickard, who was a long-standing and generous philanthropic supporter and bequestor to Monash University and former member of the Historical Studies at Monash.
We recently caught up with Dr Laskaris to find out more about her PhD journey. Read the full interview below.
Tell us about yourself?
I grew up in Greece and moved to Australia when I was nine. Since completing my undergraduate degree in journalism, I had always hoped to pursue a PhD in an Arts discipline because I loved researching and writing. However, I also wanted to gain some work experience, so I completed a second degree to become a qualified librarian and worked for several years in university libraries. In these roles, I helped academic staff members and graduate research students to use the library effectively for their research. Doing this only strengthened my resolve to complete my PhD, and so I decided to pursue History specifically after listening to freely available lectures from Yale University on the Civil War. I completed a Graduate Diploma of Arts (Research) at Monash University before enrolling in my doctorate degree. Since completing my PhD, I've been working for an educational technology company and also working towards turning my thesis into a book.
Why were you drawn to the PhD topic?
Reading the work of historians such as David Blight and Manisha Sinha made me really passionate about the American abolitionist movement. I was particularly drawn to the African American voices that these histories highlight so I read as much as I could around these topics and found myself gravitating towards histories of New England slavery. New England is not a region one typically associates with slavery but historians were doing great work to uncover these forgotten histories. All of this reading led me to think specifically about slave resistance and its relationship to abolition in this region. I really wanted to uncover slave stories and voices so I wrote about the colonial history of slave resistance in New England for my Graduate Diploma (a thesis of approximately 18,000 words). Completing this only made me want to focus on the topic even more, so I expanded it for my PhD, which focuses on slave resistance in New England between 1650 and 1800. This allowed me to focus on many different areas that I was interested in: slave resistance, abolition, Native and African American voices, and the New England region.
How would you describe your PhD experience at Monash Arts?
I completed a large portion of my PhD during the COVID lockdowns. I think this made it a far more solitary experience as I was barely ever on campus, but having something I was passionate about to focus on during this difficult time was actually also quite helpful. I can't speak more highly of my supervisors. I chose to work with my principal supervisor, Associate Professor Timothy Verhoeven, who I had previously worked with while completing my Graduate Diploma thesis. Tim is extremely reliable and helpful and has taught me more about writing than anyone. We met very regularly throughout the PhD journey and this always kept me on track. My associate supervisor, Professor Julie Kalman, was also very supportive and provided me with great feedback throughout. Overall, I had a very positive experience completing my PhD at Monash Arts. One of the highlights was being able to finally undertake a research trip to New England towards the end of my degree, where I visited archives and libraries in Boston, Hartford, and Providence.
What advice would you give future PhD students looking to conduct their research?
You hear it all the time, but you really do need a topic that you are very interested in. Beyond that, I would also suggest - pick something that is doable. Work hard to structure and limit your topic at the beginning because that will make the research and writing so much easier. Finally - start writing immediately. Research is time-consuming but if you focus on producing one chapter at a time (even if they might need substantial revision later down the track), the whole project begins to feel a lot less daunting.
Left to Right: Dr Isabelle Laskaris and Professor Megan Farrelly (Associate Dean, Graduate Research), Faculty of Arts
Dr Laskaris was supervised by Associate Professor Timothy Verhoeven and Professor Julie Kalman in the School of Philosophical, Historical and Indigenous Studies.
Congratulations also to HDR graduates Dr Stephanie Slack (PhD) and Saskia Moorrees (Master’s by Research), both from the School of Philosophical, Historical and Indigenous Studies for receiving the 2024 Vice-Chancellor’s Commendation for Thesis Excellence.
Visit the Monash Arts Graduate Research webpage to learn more about the research opportunities we offer.