Research Spotlight

Borghesani Memorial Prize Recipients (2026)

Maanasa Bandi: Implementing reproductive and menstrual health and hygiene educational interventions for adolescents in Rwanda

Colin Browning: Engineering Design Abroad in Cartagena, Columbia

Sarah Jensen: Identifying and Understanding the Reason for Nonadherence to Tuberculosis Medication in India 

Edward Kinservik: Lars Kinsarvik and the Birth of a National Craft in Norway

Daniela Monroig: Between History and Dependence: United States - Marshall Islands Relations

Previous winners

Read more about the application process for the Anne E. Borghesani Memorial Prize here. 

Senior Honors Thesis (2026)

The Senior Honors Thesis enables students to pursue independent research in a specific subject area supervised by an IR Core Faculty thesis advisor. Completion of the year-long project fulfills the IR major capstone requirement. Please visit the capstone requirements page to learn more about the Senior Honors Thesis writing process. 

2025-2026 IR Senior Honors Thesis Writers:

Daniel A. Bethke
Madison E. Bradford
Jaylin Cho
Yara Hamdan
Rena Kittredge
Mika Margalit
Seona Maskara
Isabel Reyes
Alex Wahl

John S. Gibson Award

The John S. Gibson Award is named after the founding director of the International
Relations Program at Tufts University. It is given annually to International Relations
majors who have produced particularly noteworthy examples of academic scholarship.
The award is given in two categories: Outstanding Seminar Paper and Outstanding
Senior Honors Thesis.

The 2026 John S. Gibson Award Recipients:

Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis:
Daniel Bethke, "The Specter of Constantinople: Byzantium's Political Resurrection and the Construction of Russian Memory Politics through Pedagogy"

Rena Kittredge, "Enemies of all Humankind: How the Legal History of Piracy can Inform U.S. Treatment of Foreign Terrorists"

Outstanding Seminar Paper:

Alpha Traore, "Under What Conditions Might South Korea Go Nuclear? An Evaluation of Alliance Credibility and Domestic Pressure"

The 2025 John S. Gibson Award Recipients:

Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis:
Alison Cedarbaum, "What Drives Catalan Secessionism? The Impact of Partisan Politics on Territorial Tensions in Spain"

Spencer Vernier, "Labor Imaginaries, Insurgent Tactics, and Communal Emergence: Unraveling Extraction through Revolutionary Worldmaking in Puerto Rico"
Outstanding Seminar Paper:
Amelia Colafati, "Power-Based Relations: The international sphere’s transition from a rules-based economic order to a power-based system, 1944-2025"

The 2024 John S. Gibson Award Recipients:

Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis:

Alexandra Dingle: “Where Do the Children Play?”: The Power of Play in Restrictive Refugee Camps in Greece”

Outstanding Seminar Paper:

Emma Jennings: "A Complex Systems Framework for Wicked Problems Analysis"

Camila Eisenberg: “Extra-factual Information and Cognitive Hacking in the Case of the 2016 Brexit Referendum: Feelings over Facts?” 

The 2023 John S. Gibson Award Recipients:

Outstanding Senior Honors Thesis:

Emma Christman: "The Divided Kingdom: Analyzing Brexit's Impacts on the Scottish Independence Movement"

Connor Giersch: "The Mid-Qing Underworld and Rebel Connections, A Social Geography"

Outstanding Seminar Paper:

Sofia Leyva-Castro: "Challenging the Myth of U.S. Control: A Historical Analysis of Operation Contor," written for Professor Kelly M. Greenhill's course, "Better Than the Truth: Extra-factual Information in International Politics"