Melina Olivas

Melina Olivas is a Master’s student in the History Department pursuing a Certificate in Public History. She graduated with a BA in History and Government from The University of Texas at Austin with Special Honors in History. She completed an undergraduate thesis “Werewolves and the Horror of Bodily Subjugation: Shapeshifters in Early Modern France,” for which she received the Rapoport-King Thesis Scholarship, and she published a paper "Motherhood Through the Lens of Medieval Japanese Ghosts” in the Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of Georgia Southern University. She made and managed a database for historical objects and art at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and conducted archival research as a Research Assistant in the history of slavery in France. She is interested in the intersection between religion and animals in the medieval Mediterranean and making historical information more accessible.