USM Graduate Student Earns Research Fellowship in History

Tue, 02/15/2022 - 02:06pm | By: David Tisdale

James Berry, a U.S. Army captain completing his Ph.D. in military history at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM), has been awarded a 2022 Omar N. Bradley Officer Research Fellowship in History, a program that recognizes and supports Army officers actively completing scholarly research.

Berry, a native of Boiling Springs, South Carolina, received the award to complete archival research in both Washington, D.C. and at the Quartermaster Museum at Fort Lee, Virginia as part of his dissertation project. His research focuses on the transformation and reform of Army logistics between the Spanish-American War and the end of World War I.

“It’s a great honor to receive this award from the Omar N. Bradley Foundation,” said Berry, who will use the fellowship grant to conduct archival research in Washington, D.C. He will also travel to the U.S. Army Quartermaster Museum at Fort Lee, Virginia to work directly with the curators and historians there. “My research there will compete an important step towards finishing my dissertation on US Army logistics from 1898 to 1918.”

Berry came to USM from the United States Military Academy at West Point to pursue his Ph.D., working with faculty fellows in its Dale Center for the Study of War & Society. After completing coursework this year, he will return to West Point to serve as an academic instructor in its History Department.

“It’s a real honor for the Dale Center to host students from West Point and a way that the Dale Center can serve the U.S. military and the historical community,” said Dr. Andrew Wiest, who is one of Berry’s Dale Center faculty mentors. “The high caliber of our West Point students is represented by Captain Berry’s receipt of this prestigious fellowship.”

The USM History program is housed in the College of Arts and Sciences’ School of Humanities. For more information about the program, visit https://www.usm.edu/humanities/index.php.