I am a scholar of the early American republic, specializing in political culture, gender, and partisan development at the turn of the 19th century. More specifically, my work focuses on how elite women used sociability to influence and facilitate the uneven evolution of the two-party system in the United States. 

Dr. Lauersdorf’s research interests include colonial North American borderlands focusing on the Indigenous history of the Gulf Coast and broader Southeast in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Dr. Ajibade’s research interests include everyday urban life in Africa with a current focus on a history of the politics and profits of commercial gambling in Nigeria between the colonial and post-independence period.