Staggs Wins Research Grants

Staggs Wins Two Research Grants

WMU History Ph.D. student Stephen Staggs has won two prestigious research fellowships that will allow him to spend the entire 2010-2011 academic year completing the research for his dissertation, "Indian-Dutch Relations in New Netherlands and New York during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries." Stephen is working under the supervision of Drs. Jose Brandao and James Palmitessa. Palmitessa praised Staggs's work in developing the project: "Steve's knowledge of North American and Dutch History of the Golden Age, proficiency in Dutch, and transnational approach position him to make important contributions to our knowledge of the New Netherlands."

The "NY400 Fulbright Grant" is a commemorative grant that celebrates 400 years of Dutch-American friendship and the 60th anniversary of the Fulbright Program in the Netherlands. The Netherlands Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the U.S. State Department, together with the Netherland-America Foundation and the Holland America Friendship Foundation, created this special scholarship to enable one student at the graduate level to conduct research in the Netherlands for one academic year. The scholarship is available for the 2010-2011 academic year only. Applicants from any field were invited to apply, as long as their proposed project was devoted to the study of an aspect of the longstanding relationship between the Netherlands and the United States.

Shortly after accepting the Fulbright award, Staggs learned he had also been awarded the Larry J. Hackman Research Award from the New York State Archives Trust. Staggs will use this award to return to his archival work in Albany, the other key collection he is using for his project. Dr. Brandao described Staggs's grants as "wonderful affirmations of the merit and potential of his dissertation. These awards are, after all, highly sought after and awarded after careful review of applications by experts in the field." The Department of History congratulates Steve on these awards and wishes him well on his research.