
Photo credit: Sameer A. Khan / Fotobuddy
Sunaina Danziger
Sunaina Danziger is a third-year PhD candidate with broad interests in global intellectual history, the comparative history of empire, and tensions between nationalism and internationalism in the twentieth century.
Sunaina’s dissertation is a global history of the interwar period. She uses intelligence, spying, and rising discourse around “security” to understand how subjectivity and the psyche operate within a volatile global order. Her work also engages with questions of time/temporality and modernism.
Sunaina received her BA in History from Harvard College. Her senior thesis—awarded the Philip Washburn Prize for best thesis on a historical subject and Thomas T. Hoopes Prize for outstanding scholarly work—explored how US recruitment of former Nazi scientific, military, and intelligence personnel contributed to the rhetorical and ideological construction of the “West” between 1945 and 1949.
In May 2024, Sunaina passed her general examinations at Princeton with distinction, with fields in Modern Global History, Modern South Asia, and Modern Central Europe.
Before beginning graduate studies, Sunaina worked as an editor and foreign-policy researcher in Washington, DC. She co-organizes the Global History Workshop for the 2024-2025 academic year.