Tara Zahra

BIAAS funded a $6,583 grant to Tara Zahra to study the effects of emigration from Eastern Europe to the U.S. and Western Europe. The project involved travel and living expenses in Paris and Prague for three separate research trips. The trips included research at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives and the National Archives in Paris and the National Archive in Prague. The project culminated in the first three charters of Zahra’s book The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World, which was published in 2016. Furthermore, Zahra also completed a journal article, “Travel Agents on Trial,” published in Past & Present in May 2014 and gave a series of lectures at Ohio State University, and Boston College amongst others.

Tara Zahra received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2005 and has worked as an associate professor at the University of Chicago. She has published a number of books and scholarly articles on transnational and comparative history.