2020: Caitlin Sackrinson (Ph.D. Candidate, Brandis University)
“Land in Practice, Partnership and Ownership Norwegian-American Women in the Southern Minnesota Plains in the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century.”

Video from 2020 Ledesma Virtual Presentation

2019: Claire Thomson (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Alberta)
“To hell with this, I’m going back to Wood Mountain”: Lakota People and Lakota Thamakhoche (Lakota Country) in the US-Canada Borderlands. 

2017: Tiffany Jasmin Gonzalez (Ph.D. Candidate, Texas A&M University)
“Representation for a Change: The Impact of Chicanas in Government and the Civil Rights Movement in Texas”

2016: Margaret Neubauer (Ph.D. Candidate, Southern Methodist University)
“American Indian Child Welfare, Activism, and Sovereignty in the Twentieth Century”

2015: Meggan L. Bilotte (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
“Migrant Madres and Sugar Babies: Public Health and Family in the Sugar Beet Fields of Northern Colorado”

2014: Jennifer McPherson (Ph.D. Candidate, University of New Mexico)
“Not Your Mother’s PTA: Parents, Public Authority, and the Professionalization of Politics”

2013: Brianna Theobald (Ph.D. Candidate, Arizona State University)
“‘The Simplest Rules of Motherhood’: Settler Colonialism and the Regulation of American Indian Reproduction, 1910-1976”

2012: Katherine Massoth (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Iowa)
“‘As in the Custom of the Country’: Cultural Practices and Ethnic Identity in Arizona and New Mexico, 1846-1941.”

2011: Larisa Veloz (Ph.D. Candidate, Georgetown University)
“Forgotten Migrants: Mexican Women and Migrant Families, 1930-1965.”

2010: Annie Hanshew (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Utah)
” ‘Mothering A Good Forest Fire Isn’t Easy’: Smokejumpers, Masculinity, and Forest Fires in the American West.”

2009: Margie Brown-Coronel (Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Irvine)
“Beyond the Rancho: Four Generations of del Valle Women in Southern California, 1830-1930.”

2008: Lilia Raquel D. Rosas (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Texas at Austin)
“(De)sexing Prostitution: Race, Politics, and the Reform of Sex Work in Progressive San Antonio, 1889-1920).”

2007: Christine Christensen (Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Irvine)
“ ‘Mujeres Publicas’: Euro-American Prostitutes and Reformers at the California-Mexico Border (1914-1929).”

2006: Robin Conner (Ph.D. Candidate, Emory University)
“Civilizing Soldiers: Gender and Domesticity in the Western Army.”

2005: Helen McLure (Ph.D. Candidate, Southern Methodist University)
“‘I Suppose You Think Strange the Murder of Women and Children’: Whitecapping and Lynching in the U.S. West, Midwest, and Southwest, 1850-1930.”

2004: Maritza De La Trinidad (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Arizona)
“Collective Outrage: Mexican American Activism and the Fight for Educational Equality.”

2003: Laurie Arnold (Ph.D. Candidate, Arizona State University)
“The Colville Tribes and Termination, Divisions and Gender.”

2002: Katherine Benton (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Wisconsin, Madison)
“What About Women in the ‘White Man’s Camp?’: Gender, Nation, and the Redefinition of Race in Cochise County, Arizona, 1853-1941.”

2001: Adriana Ayala (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Texas, Austin)
“The Significance of Race and Gender in Women’s Organizations in San Antonio, Texas, 1920s-1940.”

2000: Elizabeth Escobedo (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Washington)
“Forgotten Youth: Adolescence and the Mexican American Woman in WWII Los Angeles.”

1999: Dedra McDonald (Ph.D. Candidate, University of New Mexico)
“Negotiated Conquests: Domestic Servants and Gender in the Spanish and Mexican Borderlands, 1598-1860.”