Abigail Greenfield (Coronat Scholar ’25) was recently honored as one of 12 Syracuse University Scholars, the highest undergraduate honor the University bestows. In addition, she received the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence in Undergraduate Research.

Abi’s research aims to inform future improvements in civil rights and democratic governance, while also engaging in her interdisciplinary interest in art history by seeking to champion the importance of art as a window into the world.

Her work on political science Professor Thomas Keck’s Global Free Speech Repository Project at Syracuse University’s Campbell Institute sparked a specific interest in the importance of minority free expression rights to democracy. She has used some of Keck’s data in her undergraduate history distinction and honors thesis on free expression in postwar America and Canada, which examines the causes and effects of these concurrent periods of rights expansion for political minorities in both countries.

Although the bulk of her research has been in the areas of law and society and history, Abi has also taken the opportunity to work on unique projects that engage her other interests, including art history. One such project was the Art, Ecology, and Climate project at the Syracuse University Art Museum, where she worked as a research assistant, helping to develop e-museums and pedagogical materials in order to encourage cross-disciplinary engagement with the museum’s collection on topics of ecology and climate.

Abigail Greenfield (center) with Art, Ecology, and Climate project collaborators Mike Goode (left), professor of English, and Jeffrey Adams (right).

This project helped to develop her enthusiasm for applying art history to interdisciplinary questions, and has informed her personal research philosophy of engaging with the past to improve the future.