From Camp Bob to Cold War Archives: Will Tran ’26 Investigates Nuclear Symbolism and the State

The project also grows out of Tran's long-held desire to spend his senior year working on an independent thesis rooted in primary sources. "I wanted to get my hands dirty and to do something that let me make comparisons people haven't made before," he said.

Plus, "I wanted to do an honors project because it would give me a unique opportunity to move outside the classroom, outside the text, in a discipline [history] that is very much classroom- and text-focused."

His fall research award will help him access primary sources by supporting a weeklong trip during winter break to Vienna, where he can study historical documents from Europe and Russia stored at the International Atomic Energy Agency.

This summer and fall, he's been reading up to thirty hours a week of historical sources on his subject, as well as political, social, and anthropological theory. He credits his faculty committee-which includes Page Herrlinger, his primary thesis advisor, Meghan Roberts, and David Hecht -for keeping the process enjoyable.

Together, they've made this "some of the most fun I've had with history," Tran said. His advisors treat him almost as a peer, he added, challenging him and asking harder questions than he's used to in class.

"When I showed my committee my original proposal, they had a lot of intense questions for me. It was hard, but I grew so much." The experience is good training for graduate school, which he hopes to attend in a couple of years to pursue a policy-oriented international relations degree, after perhaps teaching English in Vietnam.

Tran also expressed gratitude for Bowdoin's library and its interlibrary loan system, and the College's broader liberal arts infrastructure that "prioritizes a love of learning and incentivizes research with intersectionality."