Research Spotlight

Borghesani Memorial Prize Recipients (2025)

Rio Hunter Black: Examining the Cultural and Socioeconomic Factors Affecting Access to Sustainable Protein Sources in France

Zac Colah: Exploring the Enduring Legacies of Partition in the Punjab and Kashmir

Hashem El-Saudi: Community Building in Rural Nepal

An Hà: Beyond the White Walls: Reimagining Western Exhibition Culture Through the Aesthetic of
Vietnamese Ungentrified Street Vendor

Rastislav Janardan: Of Dhurries, Dastakars, and Dastaan: A Comparative Analysis of North Indian Weft-Faced Weavings

Gawon Yoo: The Ipfundo Framework: Closing the Gap Between Health, Education, and Water Systems
in Rural Rwanda
 

Previous winners

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

Senior Honors Thesis (2025)

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. 

2024-2025 IR Senior Honors Thesis Writers:

Larson Burak
Alison Cedarbaum
Maddy Foster
Thomas Gatzke
Ian Kaplan
Rohith Raman
Spencer Vernier
Cathy Yao

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 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"