Research Opportunities: HOUR Program

The Department of History offers the HOUR (History Opportunities for Undergraduate Research) Program for undergraduate students interested in research. In this program, students collaborate with department faculty on their scholarly work.

Each semester, students can apply to assist members of the history faculty who would like help on their research projects. Students in this program will gain valuable research experience working with a variety of historic documents and evidence.

Students can receive either credit or an hourly wage through this program:

  • Hourly rate is $15.00. Students who are being paid with department funds, instead of out of an individual professor’s research account, will be limited to payment of up to $450.00 (30 hours) a semester or during the summer (to be determined with a professor). Students may apply for additional research hours pending availability of funds.
  • Credit is for HIST 395: Independent Research, providing the student completes a substantial writing assignment based on their research. If you choose this option you must:
    • Devise a syllabus with the professor with whom you will be working with
    • Register for the course online (please make sure you complete this before the University deadline)

Please contact Jacquilyn Rizzo with any questions, jacquilyn.rizzo@rochester.edu.

Apply

Students can apply online through the online hour application.

If you want to work for a professor that you have not taken a course with, you must also submit a letter of recommendation from a faculty member who has taught you. Letters of recommendations can be sent to the Department of History office or emailed to history.department@rochester.edu.

Opportunities

Structured opportunities for HOUR students are listed below. If you’re interested in a different topic, please feel free to reach out to other faculty members in the department to see if you can get involved with their research. Many of our faculty would be glad to create additional research opportunities that would qualify for the HOUR program.

Women's Collective Knowledge in Latin America: Disentangling Local and Global Ideas of Development, 1930-70 (Professor Ball)

This project investigates how Latin American women understood and worked toward development between 1920 and 1980, particularly in relation to maternal health. It disentangles local from state, hemispheric, and international network initiatives to demonstrate how local projects became absorbed into broader efforts. Is also provides a corrective reading of the genesis of global development ideas, which tend to overvalue contributions from the Global North, men, and the post-WWII era. Research will entail working with relevant collections through the Rockefeller Archive Center. Digital records of Rockefeller fellow recipients will be used to create a list of names and identifying information to cross with hospital nursing records and to explore the Rockefeller training as a node of connection.  Research may also entail compiling a list of resources related to maternal health and social development at the Library of Congress or reading through relevant Latin American health publications and newspaper advertisements. Spanish and/or Portuguese are required, and knowledge of Latin American history and/or public health history is preferred.

Program Testimonies

"The HOUR Program provides an invaluable platform for students to engage directly with cutting-edge research. Participating in this program allowed me to work on a project that allowed me to hone skills in research, and to create a digital project with an interactive map that reflects the origins of the foreigners in the Cartagena 1630 registry. I worked closely with historical documents to trace the foreigners' original point of departure to their arrival in Cartagena. The interdisciplinary nature of the project was particularly exciting. I had the chance to apply digital tools to historical research, creating visualizations that illuminated the connections between Cartagena and other parts of the world. Professor Sierra provided incredible mentorship, guiding me as I navigated the entries and supplemental information that supported the digital mapping. This experience not only expanded my knowledge of Latin American history but also taught me practical skills like paleography and navigating various databases that I can continue to use in my own academic projects. It’s rewarding to know that my contributions helped shape ongoing research that will be accessible to other students and researchers. The collaborative spirit of the program made it an unforgettable experience that has greatly enriched my academic journey."  -Sofia Flores Lopez 

“The HOUR Program is a wonderful opportunity for undergraduate students to immerse themselves in active research projects led by Research 1 faculty members in the University of Rochester's History department. Over the past few years, I have offered a 'Digital Caribbean' project to help me identify possible documents for an ongoing book project on piracy and blackness during the 1680s and 1690s. My research centers on people of African descent, who are often very difficult to locate in records from the seventeenth century. As a result, I cast a wide net and invite students to use their expertise to identify print materials and digital archives that might shed light on Black experiences in colonial Mexico, Jamaica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. The students that have taken up this challenge have analyzed English-language sources (such as Calendar of State Papers), report and chronicles by French priests and officials, and Spanish-language correspondence between naval officers and governors throughout the Spanish Caribbean. Some students have even learned paleography (the study of ancient handwriting) to advance this research and their own original projects. Others deploy their skills in database construction to analyze marriage and baptism registers in the language of their choice. I am always stunned by the quality of HOUR students' work and the speed with which they learn to navigate these ever-expanding digital archives. Finally, it's worth noting that in this collaborative program, you (the student) end up shaping much of the future research that will be presented at academic conferences and published in scholarly books and journals. It's a wonderful program." -Pablo Sierra