U.S. Studies Online is edited and moderated by a group of PhD and Early Career Researchers based in the UK.
The editorial team for 2022-23 includes Sam Thozer, Molly Becker, Tom Cryer and Aija Oksman, and is led by co-editors Sarah Collier and Robyn Shooter.
Sarah Collier (University College London) – Co-Editor
Sarah Collier is a PhD candidate in English Literature at UCL, researching representations of military masculinity in narratives of the war on terror. Combining her interests in war, gender and contemporary American culture, her work looks across narrative media to consider how gender intersects with, shapes, and is shaped by technology. She has previously worked on the Still Point Journal, a LAHP-funded arts and creative writing platform featuring work by postgraduate researchers in London and beyond.
Robyn Shooter (Kings College London) – Co-Editor
Robyn Shooter is an English and Music PhD candidate at King’s College London, examining genre, gender representation, and community formation in Americana music (1960 to Present). She has also previously authored and co-authored several original articles, including: an examination of aura and authenticity in the sites of the Grand Ole Opry; a comparative study of the pastoral and female autonomy in the music of Julie Candeille and Taylor Swift; and an exploration of the role of sentimentality and regional identity in the works of Dolly Parton and June Carter Cash (1970-1975).
Tom Cryer (University College London) – Events Editor
Tom Cryer is a AHRC-funded PhD Candidate in American History at University College London, where his research uses the life, scholarship, and advocacy of the historian John Hope Franklin as a lens on memory, race, and nationhood within the twentieth-century United States. He is more broadly interested in the discursive violence wielded by historical scholarship and history’s function for policymakers, having participated in conferences at the Ditchley Foundation and the Salzburg Global Seminar.
Aija Oksman (University of Edinburgh) – Book Reviews Editor
After an MLitt in Publishing (University of Stirling) and MSc (University of Edinburgh) on radical self-representation of Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, Aija is now a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh. Her current research focuses on African American women writer’s literary and counterliterary experience with the FBI. Her research interests are interdisciplinary and intersectional with a focus on women’s and other marginalised groups’ literary, cultural and socio-economical interactions and counteractions. Recently, Aija has also been tutoring undergraduates on Literary Studies at University of Edinburgh.
Sam Thozer (University of Manchester) – Co-Communications and Outreach Editor
Samson Thozer is a first-year PhD student in American Studies at the University of Manchester. His research is on the formation and expression of New Negro identity in interwar Detroit. He has a BA in English Literature and American Studies, and an MA in English, both from the University of Manchester. Between 2017 and 2021, he lived in the USA, teaching at Pennsylvania Highlands Community College and working with kids at the YMCA. He wrote a book called Halfway to Everywhere: Two Years’ Tarry in Clearfield, PA, self-published in 2021.
Molly Becker (University of Cambridge) – Co-Communications and Outreach Editor
Molly Becker recently completed her PhD in twentieth-century Midwestern American fiction at the University of Cambridge. Since September, she has held the role of the Alumni Communications Officer at Christ’s College, Cambridge.