Laura Lee Honsig

Bio:
As of March 2025: Pre-Doc, History of Science and Knowledge, History Institute (University of Vienna)

2021-2025: Master of Arts in Global History and Global Studies, graduation with honors (University of Vienna)

2017-2021: Senior Child and Youth Advocate, CASA of Travis Country (Austin, Texas, USA)

2014-2021: Writing Consultant, Earlham Writing Center (Richmond, Indiana, USA)

2013-2017: Bachelor of Arts in Peace and Global Studies & Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, graduation with honors (Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, USA)

2016: Education Language and Culture Program, Arabic (Amman, Jordan)

2011: Indiana University Honors Program Foreign Language, Spanish (Valencia, Spain)

Research Interests:
Indigenous history of North America

History of education and pedagogy

Histories of empire

Global history

Current Research:
My dissertation looks at colonial schooling with a particular focus on boarding schools in the transnational history of U.S. empire. The United States not only established boarding schools for indigenous children on the North American continent beginning in the 1880s but brought aspects of this system to other parts of the world in an era of imperial expansion beginning around 1900. Bringing the geographical contexts of North America, the Pacific, and the Caribbean together helps paint a fuller picture of the history of U.S. colonization and imperialism. More importantly, my work also looks at the diverse knowledges and worldviews that multiple groups of indigenous peoples brought into boarding schools and the ways in which their schooling experiences followed them into various political and social developments in the 20^th century. Colonial schooling in this view is as much about so-called “Americanization” (or “Filipinization,” for example) as agricultural and industrial transformation, citizenship, and nation-building in its myriad colonial and anti-colonial forms.