harvard dissertations

Dissertations

Most Harvard PhD dissertations from 2012 forward are available online in DASH , Harvard’s central open-access repository and are linked below. Many older dissertations can be found on ProQuest Dissertation and Theses Search which many university libraries subscribe to.

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PhD candidates are required to complete and submit a dissertation to qualify for degree conferral. This section provides general information on formatting, submission, publishing, and distribution options. Since departments maintain specific requirements for the content and evaluation of the dissertation, students should review their program’s guidelines prior to starting the process.

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While Sandel argues that pursuing perfection through genetic engineering would decrease our sense of humility, he claims that the sense of solidarity we would lose is also important.

This thesis summarizes several points in Sandel’s argument, but it does not make a claim about how we should understand his argument. A reader who read Sandel’s argument would not also need to read an essay based on this descriptive thesis.  

Broad thesis (arguable, but difficult to support with evidence) 

Michael Sandel’s arguments about genetic engineering do not take into consideration all the relevant issues.

This is an arguable claim because it would be possible to argue against it by saying that Michael Sandel’s arguments do take all of the relevant issues into consideration. But the claim is too broad. Because the thesis does not specify which “issues” it is focused on—or why it matters if they are considered—readers won’t know what the rest of the essay will argue, and the writer won’t know what to focus on. If there is a particular issue that Sandel does not address, then a more specific version of the thesis would include that issue—hand an explanation of why it is important.  

Arguable thesis with analytical claim 

While Sandel argues persuasively that our instinct to “remake” (54) ourselves into something ever more perfect is a problem, his belief that we can always draw a line between what is medically necessary and what makes us simply “better than well” (51) is less convincing.

This is an arguable analytical claim. To argue for this claim, the essay writer will need to show how evidence from the article itself points to this interpretation. It’s also a reasonable scope for a thesis because it can be supported with evidence available in the text and is neither too broad nor too narrow.  

Arguable thesis with normative claim 

Given Sandel’s argument against genetic enhancement, we should not allow parents to decide on using Human Growth Hormone for their children.

This thesis tells us what we should do about a particular issue discussed in Sandel’s article, but it does not tell us how we should understand Sandel’s argument.  

Questions to ask about your thesis 

• Is the thesis truly arguable? Does it speak to a genuine dilemma in the source, or would most readers automatically agree with it?  
• Is the thesis too obvious? Again, would most or all readers agree with it without needing to see your argument?  
• Is the thesis complex enough to require a whole essay's worth of argument?  
• Is the thesis supportable with evidence from the text rather than with generalizations or outside research?  
• Would anyone want to read a paper in which this thesis was developed? That is, can you explain what this paper is adding to our understanding of a problem, question, or topic?
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See here for a full list of dissertations since 1904 .

Founded as a graduate program in 1904 and joining with the undergraduate Literature Concentration in 2007, Harvard’s Department of Comparative Literature operates at the crossroads of multilingualism, literary study, and media history.

© 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College

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Congratulations to Aurélien Bellucci, PhD ’23: Honorable Mention for the 2024 ACLA Charles Bernheimer Prize!

Congratulations to lara norgaard: acla 2024 a. owen aldridge prize winner.

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Smith, E. R. C. (2019). Conduits of invasive species into the UK: the angling route? Ph. D. Thesis. University College London. Available at: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10072700 (Accessed: 20 May 2021).

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Six students share their inspirations and outcomes

From African baobabs to virtual reality, here is a closer look at six thesis projects Harvard students undertook this year.

In the suburbs

Madeline Ranalli is pictured alongside a mural promoting Nonantum, one of 13 villages within her hometown of Newton, Massachusetts.

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

In leafy suburbs across the U.S., residents have rallied to block affordable housing from their neighborhoods.

“A lot of the resistance comes in the form of people saying, ‘Look what this development is going to do to the trees,’” noted Madeline Ranalli ’23.

The government concentrator (with a secondary in energy and environment ) used her senior thesis to examine how these communities wield environmentalism in opposition to multifamily residential developments.

“There’s this misconception that the more green you see, the more environmentally friendly a place is,” Ranalli explained. “But the way a community is designed can actually undermine the environmental benefits of those natural resources.”

The thesis analyzes four car-centric suburbs in California’s Bay Area, where the shortage of affordable housing is especially stark. The region is the birthplace of mainstream American environmentalism and has a history of resistance to multifamily housing. But it’s also a place where lawmakers are passing leading-edge legislation to bolster affordability and density.

Ranalli conducted dozens of in-person interviews, and worked with the Harvard Digital Lab for the Social Sciences to survey the nationwide frequency of using environmentalism to oppose land use that would actually reduce carbon footprints.

“This is by no means unique to California,” said Ranalli, who grew up observing similar rhetoric in her hometown of Newton, Massachusetts. “It’s very much a phenomenon in affluent, Democratic suburbs.”

While conducting research, Ranalli, now a legislative intern with the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, discovered “The Environmental Protection Hustle” (1979) by the late MIT urban planning professor Bernard J. Frieden , which helped inform her argument that environmentalism is more than an ideology about the importance of protecting natural resources.

“It’s also a very legitimate political strategy that can be employed very successfully to achieve certain ends,” Ranalli said.

Across the savannas

Audrey “Rey” Chin in Mozambique studying baobab trees.

Courtesy photo

Last summer, Audrey “Rey” Chin ’24 hiked 125 miles across dense savanna in Mozambique, painstakingly collecting data from more than 100 trees that make up a delicate, changing ecosystem.

An Environmental Science and Public Policy program concentrator, Chin wrote her senior thesis on the distribution and vulnerability of African baobabs, the largest fruit-bearing trees on the planet, which carry both ecological and cultural significance for the region. Elephants use these iconic trees as nutrient sources, stripping their bark, extracting water, and eating them. In doing so, they spread the seeds to help the trees reproduce.

Chin wrote her senior thesis on the distribution and vulnerability of African baobabs.

Chin’s thesis integrates her field study with remote sensing data to evaluate the extent to which landscape variables, including elephants, affect the health of baobabs. Chin is conducting the research in the lab of Andrew Davies , assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology.

“I think [the project] is ultimately about trying to find a way to balance the conservation priorities of the two species, and understand the interaction that’s happening,” she said.

The remote Karingani Game Reserve in southern Mozambique, where Chin and classmate/labmate Hannah Adler ’25 conducted the field work, is a test bed for understanding the current level of elephant utilization of the trees, and how that relationship could inform stewardship and conservation practices for years to come. The area came under official protection in 2017. Since then, migration from nearby Kruger National Park as well as anti-poaching and landscape restoration measures have led to a surge in the elephant population.

“The opportunity to witness the biodiversity and interconnectivity of different species was probably the most awe-inspiring part of the project,” Chin said.

In the workshop

Francisco Marquez with his prototype bicycle.

Photos by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

Francisco Marquez ’24 had always ridden bicycles, but it was pandemic-fueled restlessness during his freshman year that led the mechanical engineering concentrator to learn how to build them.

Now the de facto bike mechanic of his friend group, Marquez pursued a senior capstone project that tackled a perennial problem for two-wheeled enthusiasts like him: size.

“Because I’m a fairly large person, most bikes don’t fit me,” said Marquez, who is 6 foot 4. “I also have a bunch of friends who are very small, and they also can’t find a bike that really fits them. I decided to try to make a bike that could fit everybody.”

Marquez designed and built a modular bicycle frame with a shape and size that can be adjusted to fit very short people, very tall people, and everyone in between. It also allows children to grow into their wheels.

“It could even be something that you buy for a teenager, that they can then use as they grow into adulthood,” he said.

Simplifying the frame into standard components such as top tube, down tube, and fork, Marquez redesigned each piece with unlocking mechanisms using joints and pins, allowing for rotating, loosening, and retightening. Manufacturing was no simple task; it took a year’s worth of testing to find the right materials and configuration for a bike that could be adjusted easily yet remain reliably rigid during use. He settled upon a retrofit of a vintage steel-framed bicycle and created his own custom parts. Throughout the process, Marquez picked up skills like welding and spent many hours in the Science and Engineering Complex machine shop , working with tools like a lathe and a mill.

Testing it for the first time in its tallest configuration, Marquez smiled when it fit like a glove. He said it was gratifying to be able to see his own design come to life.

“I’ve never ridden a bike that feels like this,” he said.

In the gardens

Rivers Sheehan in her studio space on Linden Street.

In the southern colonies of 18th-century America, the science of botany was used for economic purposes but also for aesthetics, using beautiful gardens and cultivated landscapes to mask a brutal plantation economy.

Rivers Sheehan ’23, a joint concentrator in art, film, and visual studies and history of science , completed a thesis project that combined historical research with an art exhibit, examining how botany, considered a gentlemanly European science in the 18th century, found new roots in the U.S.

“I looked at how that epistemology got applied in the South, in the frontier lands where people were both setting up really profitable and violent plantations using botanical knowledge and also setting up estate gardens that were inspired by French and English landscape design, often on the same properties,” said Sheehan, who wrote a 90-page paper detailing her findings.

For the art element, the December 2023 graduate created a multimedia exhibit of paintings, photographs, prints, and drawings inspired by her research at the plantations and also her own relationship to the natural world. Some of the pieces use paper dyed with natural indigo, birch bark, rabbit skin glue, leaves, and wild mushrooms. Sheehan worked in a variety of media, each representative of a different modality she learned during her time at Harvard.

“The studio project is a way of bringing this niche research into the contemporary moment and offering another way for an audience to come into it who isn’t necessarily an academic historian of science, which is the audience for the written part of it,” Sheehan explained.

Stepping back in time

Cindy Tian created a virtual reality program.

Virtual reality can facilitate all manner of educational experiences — like bringing visitors inside the Pyramids of Giza . Cindy Tian ’23, a joint concentrator in computer science and archaeology , wondered how the technology would fare with more complicated lessons.

“I wanted to see if VR can show archaeological processes that are harder for the general public to understand,” she said. “Would the technology improve the transfer of information from archaeologists and museum staff?”

Her thesis took the form of an exhibit for the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography , still on view near the third-floor stairwell. Tian first created a display featuring artifacts that illuminate flintknapping — or fashioning blades, points, and other tools from a stone core. On view are everything from hammerstones to chipping tools.

Tian, a December grad, also created a virtual reality program that allowed visitors to simulate making their own tools with objects like the ones on display.

“Flintknapping is a reductive process where you basically remove pieces of rock,” said Tian, who will soon start a full-time role with a music analytics startup. “It’s just one of the things where it’s better to learn by doing rather than reading or hearing someone talk about it.”

Finally, Tian tested who learned best about flintknapping — those who took in the exhibit, those who used the VR program, or those who encountered both.

“Are we integrating VR because it’s cool? Or is it actually helpful ?” she wondered.

Those who experienced both the exhibit and the VR scored highest on Tian’s post-visit content quiz. The same group emerged with more positive opinions of the flintknapping lesson.

“They essentially got to do it without doing it,” Tian said. “I found that the virtual reality is definitely beneficial for helping people learn about archaeological processes.”

Working in the studio

Five large abstract paintings are included in Isabel Haro’s thesis, which is titled “Taking Refuge.”

Abstract art has long served as a vessel for artists — think Hilma af Klint or Wassily Kandinsky — to explore religion and spirituality.

Isabel Haro ’24, a concentrator in art, film, and visual studies with a secondary in music , was inspired to pursue a thesis that explored this topic after taking the course “Spiritual Paths to Abstract Art” with Professor Ann Braude at Harvard Divinity School . Haro, who practices Buddhism, wanted to create a collection of work inspired by her own experiences.

“It’s very hard to talk about spirituality in the contemporary art world. It’s something that a lot of people are not interested in, or actively shy away from,” said Haro. “My intention was to be really diligent and responsible with how I was bringing Buddhism into the art conversation.”

To prepare, she studied other artists and paintings, read Buddhist scripture and poetry, meditated, and sketched. Inspired by color field style and the techniques of abstract painter Morris Louis, Haro played with gravity, standing on a stool to pour ink down the canvas, and laid canvas on the floor to let the paint move in rivulets.

The thesis, titled “Taking Refuge,” includes five large abstract paintings done in paint on muslin and canvas. One is painted with black Sumi ink — the kind used for Zen calligraphy — and uses salt and soap to create textures.

“I spent so much time preparing for this final set of paintings and all of that work prepared me to let these paintings emerge in a natural way,” Haro said. “I learned how valuable it is to work on a project over an extended period of time.”

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Sasha de Vogel

Raphael Morrison Dorman Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow, Weatherhead Scholars Program

I am a political scientist researching the politics of authoritarian regimes and collective action in Russia and the post-Soviet region.

I am a Raphael Morrison Dorman Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow at the  Weatherhead Center for International Affairs  at  Harvard University . I received my PhD in  Political Science  from the  University of Michigan  in 2021 and I was a post-doctoral fellow at  New York University 's  Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia  from 2021-2022.

My work examines when and why autocratic regimes promise concessions to protestors, how these promises affect mobilization and their impact on policies.

In my  book project , I emphasize that a concession entails a process of potential policy change that begins with a promise of future action. Because these promises are not inherently credible, concessions are vulnerable to reneging, or the deliberate failure to implement concessions. I argue that while concessions can be an avenue to address problems about which the government lacked information, in many cases, they are used to undermine mobilization in the short-term, even if later reneging allows the grievance to endure. The book uses an original database on protest campaigns against the Moscow City government about policy-related grievances and is also informed by interviews with activists I conducted during fieldwork in Moscow. My related dissertation won the Juan Linz Prize for Best Dissertation in the Comparative Study of Democracy.

My other  research  interests in comparative politics include authoritarian institutions, repression, authoritarian responsiveness, urban politics and post-Soviet politics.

I also hold an MA in Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Regional Studies and a BA in Slavic Studies, both from  Columbia University . My research has been supported by the  National Science Foundation  and the  Carnegie Corporation/Harriman Institute , among others.

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“I recently obtained my PhD in Archaeology in the Anthropology Department presenting a dissertation involving the use of geospatial techniques in the study of people’s movement across foreign landscapes and the identification of commercial pharaonic routes connecting Egypt to eastern Sudan. The study of such routes aimed to infer the development of complexity in Egypt and the involvement of the state in long-distance trade. My dissertation provides a preliminary predictive model of movement across the desert and navigation along the Red Sea coast based on geomorphology, climate, ancient texts, and historical information. Said model has the potential to identify areas of archaeological interest contributing to the protection of the archaeological evidence threatened by the illegal activities which are increasing in these two countries. More broadly I investigate the relationship between people and landscapes, examining people’s migrations across land and sea. My research interest is in understanding people’s interaction with landscapes.”

“Thanks to the ASPR Term Time Funding, I was able to spend the semester in Italy to research the historical archives of the Italian Air Force and the Genio Militare in Rome which contain maps, aerial photography as well as travel logs, and journals with descriptions of local people and places, to find the recording of ancient structures, rock art inscriptions, and traces of historical paths. During the colonial era, the Italian colony of Eritrea and Abyssinia included Kassala and its hinterland, and the colony gained its independence in 1936. The material produced during this colonial period, in particular the aerial photography, the recording of water sources and desert tracks, were crucial for the geospatial analyses I performed in my dissertation.”

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05-03-2024 – Dissertation Defense – Hossain, Intekhab

05-03-2024 – Dissertation Defense – Hossain, Intekhab (Flyer)

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MOSCOW: Where Public Meets Private

"moscow is a classically arendtian representation of the public realm, as seen in khutsiev’s  i am twenty , which serves a portrayal of its open landscape—filled with busy street fares, bustling urban squares, dinner parties, and crowded trains.".

Moscow's public realm, as seen in "I Am Twenty" (54:71). 

Moscow is a behemoth of a city filled to its brim with culture, urban sprawl, and people—with a population of a whopping 16.2 million people residing in its urban center, it’s the largest metropolitan city in Europe, outnumbering other giants like London (12.2 million) and Paris (10.9 million). Therefore, it is especially interesting to explore the role of public spaces in this city.

With so much space, Moscow seems to be the ultimate Arendtian representation of the public realm. As explored in the  Moscow Omeka blog post  focusing on the city’s various parks, urban spaces play an especially important role in Moscow, a city cmoming to terms with its past to enter the world stage as a post-Socialist city. The advent of public space is an important part of discussion for Moscow’s built environment today, with new art exhibits and discussions cropping up recently.  “Moskva: urban space” , for example, is a recent exhibit from the 2014 Venice Biennale by the city’s chief architect to explore how “today’s urban singularity is more so based on the ‘connective tissue’ that is the public spaces, and the ways in which these spaces have become equally important markers of contemporary metropolis identities.” [1] This exhibition provides great insight into the sprawl of Moscow and the utter importance of urban spaces in the city. 

Beautiful and expansive, Moscow's famous Gorky Park boasts many fountains and a great deal of public space. 

Looking at specific examples from this course, Marlen Khutsiev’s 1965 film, I Am Twenty , is the perfect representation of this very public realm in the sprawling city of Moscow, even half a century ago. It’s an exquisitely gorgeous homage to the beautiful city, and much of the film focuses on scenes that occur in the public realm: Sergei and his friends smoking cigarettes around the city late at night or early in the morning; hosting dinner parties where they all converse with one another; and generally just spending a great deal of time outside. 

Sergei and his friends have an intimate conversation about their lives out in the open realm—the private realm, still in the public realm.

Above is the perfect example of the Ardentian public sphere as seen in the movie. Sergei and his friends chat about life, love, and everything in between, but with lots of people around. Even in the image captured above, we see not only Sergei and his two friends on screen, but about four other figures walking squarely past the camera, with a beautiful, open square in the back filled with cars, trains, and sprawling public space. Interestingly, the public realm actually allows for the existence of the private realm in many such scenes, which complicates and enriches its role in a way that Sennett or Ardent do not point out. In these moments of public display in busy squares, the characters actually engage in intimate conversations, allowing for the private realm to become seamlessly integrated into the public one.

Anya and Sergei share an intimate moment during the very public May Day parade.

Another scene occurs during the May Day parade, perhaps the most “public” of realms shown in the entire movie.  It’s a scene where thousands gather in the streets of Moscow to celebrate the Allied victory in the Eastern front and the surrendering of Nazi Germany. Here, in perhaps the most crowded one might imagine a street, Sergei and Anya meet and share an intimately private moment. They chat and end up on a beautiful night around town together, traipsing about the city—private and intimate, though fully in the public.

All of this sheds light into Moscow as a place of the public realm: while it follows the classic Arendtian description of busy open spaces, there is the caveat that the private realm can exist even in these public busy spaces. This is reflected perfectly through most scenes and interactions throughout the film.

Sources: 

[1] Rawn, Evan.   "'Moskva: Urban Space'" Investigates the Future of Moscow's Public Realm at the 2014 Venice Biennale.   Arch Daily,  August 10, 2014.