Kurt Andrew Dodd Endowed Scholarship in History History and Art History

Jennifer Mills is a PhD student in History at George Mason University, where she is affiliated with the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. She grew up in Virginia and North Carolina and served 10 years in the United States Air Force as a Staff Sergeant across both active duty and the Air National Guard. After her service, she spent over a decade working as a medical laboratory scientist before returning to school to pursue her passion for history, completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and then coming to GMU specifically for its outstanding digital history program. Her research focuses on racial violence and labor history, with her dissertation examining the 1887 Thibodaux Massacre in Louisiana, a violent suppression of a Black sugar workers' strike that has been largely overlooked in American historical memory. She presented this work at the American Historical Association's annual conference in January 2026 and is working toward publication. After completing her PhD, she hopes to pursue a career as a history professor.