Dr. Erika Weidemann Bravo has been selected as the next Editor of the AHSGR Journal. Her term will start in January 2024.
Dr. Bravo earned her Ph.D in History from Texas A&M University in May of 2020. She provided a synopsis of her dissertation, titled “A Malleable Identity: The Immigration of Ethnic Germans to North America, 1947-1957”:
“My dissertation examined the identity of this small group of Germans from Russia to better understand how ethnic, national, and religious identities affect a population’s movement and influenced nations’ and organizations’ treatment of them. At various times throughout its 150-year history, Chortitza’s ethnic Germans claimed Mennonite, Dutch, German, and Soviet identities. Their claimed and perceived identities influenced how Nazi occupying forces treated them, where the Third Reich resettled them, and how the advancing Soviet Army viewed them. World War II ultimately precipitated their immigration to North America, with one’s identity a strong predictor of whether United Nation organizations would accept their immigration application. I argued that Chortitza’s history is a window into the effects of war on migration and the role identity played in shaping that movement.”
Dr. Bravo is currently an Instructor in Texas A&M’s History Department and has conducted public history, research, and archival work for over 10 years. She is also a postdoctoral research associate as the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Research Partner Historian at Texas A&M. In addition to publishing several book reviews and giving conference lectures, she wrote a chapter in European Mennonites and the Holocaust titled “Identity and Complicity: The Post-World War II Immigration of Chortitza Mennonites.” Also, Dr. Bravo has intermediate proficiency in German and Spanish, as well as beginner proficiency in Russian.
We are very excited to welcome Dr. Erika Bravo to the Editorial Board in this role!
Dr. Michael Brown, who has served as Journal Editor for the last four years, will step down from this role in December 2023. Currently, he plans to remain on the Editorial Board in 2024.