Gillian Smith

Gillian Smith is a PhD student in the field of British history. She is broadly focused on the intersection of systems of gender and crime during the early modern period, with enthusiasm for microhistory and the study of everyday individuals. Her most recent research examined women charged with petty treason, a form of homicide in which the accused was charged with killing a social superior, and was awarded the Mary Ritter Beard Award. 

Gillian holds a B.A. in History from UCLA, where she enjoyed the opportunity to delve into English archival records to conduct case studies of rural eighteenth-century female murderers as a Keck Fellow. Prior to entering the Ph.D. program at Stanford, she also worked on projects relating to modern Jewish history, most notably studying the Mechelen transit camp as a Alan D. Leve Center Undergraduate Fellow. The culmination of her work as a researcher and editor was the posthumous publication of Israel Cappell’s memoir With Many Miracles: A Memoir of Holocaust Survival in Belgium (2024).