The AHA is pleased to announce the winners of its first AHA Today Blog Contest. Over the course of the summer, each of these historians will be writing for AHA Today about their scholarship and the experience of doing their research.

Eladio Bobadilla, a doctoral student at Duke University, will be blogging about his research on how Chicanos have embraced the cause of undocumented immigrants in America—a project that will involve both archival work and oral interviews.

George Washington University PhD candidate Patrick Nugent, while in the process of revising his dissertation on mid-20th-century Staten Island ecological history, will investigate how the issues examined in his research can be reexamined in consideration of contemporary debates surrounding this borough of New York City.

Marcia Schenck, a doctoral student at Princeton University, will take us into the archives of Angola and describe the challenges of conducting research in an unfamiliar place and culture.

All three historians will encounter various challenges in the course of the summer, and by blogging about their experiences, they will be generously including us in their journeys.

This contest is designed to highlight the voices of graduate students and to emphasize the importance of communicating the work of historians, broadly defined, to a variety of audiences and in a variety of media. We are hoping to create a dialogue between readers and these historians about the issues they raise, so please provide feedback with your thoughts and similar experiences in the comments.

Each contest winner will have a distinct profile on AHA Today and receive $50 worth of AHA publications of their choice.

Over the next few days, we will be publishing the introductory posts of each blogger, who will describe their research and the issues they will be exploring this summer. Thank you in advance to all three bloggers for your contributions of scholarship and insight to the AHA and its readership.

This post first appeared on AHA Today.