Dr. Ellen L. Berg’s research focuses on immigrant experiences and the cultivation of American national identity during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.  She attended graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied under Jon Gjerde and Paula Fass. She received a Ph.D. in American History with a focus on immigration.  Her dissertation was entitled "Citizens in the Republic of Childhood: Immigrants and the Free Kindergarten, 1880-1920."  She received her B.A. in history from Carleton College and also spent a year examining emigrant perspectives at the University of Bergen, Norway, on a Fulbright Fellowship. From 2006-2007, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. She recently received a Swann Fellowship (Library of Congress) and a research fellowship at the Smithsonian Museum of American History for study of images of Miss Columbia and their relation to American identity in the Progressive Era.