The Department of History gives the Bridget Phillips Award to undergraduate students traveling abroad for study or research. The award was established by the Phillips family to honor Bridget’s memory. After graduating from UF’s Department of History in 1988, Bridget entered graduate school at Johns Hopkins University. She was murdered in her apartment in 1989 in an unsolved case. Professor Tim Dean, a friend from graduate school and a donor to her fund, and Bridget’s family attended our Annual Honors Conference, where they announced the recipients of the award for 2023-24, Daniel Hernandez and Catherine Hill.
Daniel Hernandez went to Madrid this summer to work at the Spanish National Archive toward his honors thesis. In 2022 he spent ten weeks on a study abroad program in Spain. He became fascinated with the legacies of Al-Andalus, Islamic rule in Iberia, after visiting La Alhambra and Mezquita-Catedral, the famed medieval mosque turned cathedral after Christian states defeated their Islamic rivals on the peninsula. Although he had already spent time in Spain, he was still nervous about his first archival trip. Working in the archive with centuries-old documents about the very places he had visited gave him new confidence. “My experience made me realize that I could communicate in a completely Spanish-speaking academic setting better than I expected,” he said.
Catherine Hill used the Bridget Phillips Award to travel to Brussels, Belgium, where she conducted research for her honors thesis at the National Archives of Belgium. She found documents in Brussels about the events leading to the London Conference of 1839, which confirmed the Belgian Revolution and the country’s independence from the Netherlands. “Interacting with the archivist and being able to use my French was extremely rewarding,” she recalled. Walking around Brussels, she was surrounded by reminders of events in her documents. “There’s something exciting about reading letters from Lord Palmerston at 10 o’clock and then finding yourself walking along Palmerston Avenue at 3 o’clock,” she said. “The legacy of the revolution is part of everyday life.”
These students’ research trips remind us that there is no replacement for the archive of the feet. The continuing reverberations of the Belgian Revolution were a reminder to Catherine that history matters in the present, that our archival research has an impact today. For Daniel, it gave him the realization that he understood scholarly debates about Al-Andalus in a way that went beyond a textbook. Surely Bridget Phillips, whose archives included archeological digs in Austria, would have approved. Catherine plans to continue with her studies in a doctoral program in European history. Daniel plans to attend law school where he says his skill in Spanish language, reading, and writing will all be assets.
Daniel and Catherine’s study abroad experiences were made possible by the Phillips family and Tim Dean. If you would like to support student study abroad opportunities, please visit the Department’s giving page to learn how you can make a secure, tax-deductible gift.
