Megan
McDonie
APS Program in the History of Science Predoctoral Fellow
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Megan McDonie (APS Program in the History of Science Predoctoral Fellow) is a PhD candidate in Latin American history at Penn State University with minor fields in medieval and early modern global history. Her dissertation, currently titled “Explosive Encounters: Volcanic Landscapes, Indigenous Knowledge, and Cultural Exchange,” explores how Nahuas, Kaqchikel Maya, and Spaniards understood and interacted with volcanoes in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. She has spent the past year conducting archival research in Spain, Mexico, and Guatemala with support from the Council on Library and Information Resources, the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright-Hays, and the National Science Foundation. She is excited to work at the APS Library this year, where she will primarily be examining Kaqchikel language sources and the Ruben E. Reina Papers. 

Research Project: “Explosive Encounters: Volcanic Landscapes, Indigenous Knowledge, and Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Mesoamerica”