Sam Bisno

Sam Bisno

Princeton

Queen's University Belfast (QUB)

History

Sam Bisno is studying History at Queen’s University Belfast. He will next head to Brown University to do his PhD in History. From Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Sam graduated from Princeton with a degree in History. The son of lifelong labor organizers, Sam spent summers working to win safe staffing standards for Rhode Island’s nursing home workers and encouraging investment in clean energy and union jobs for the Appalachia region's workers.  He was the recipient of the Carter Combe Prize for the best junior-year independent work in History at Princeton. Sam was Editor-in-Chief of the Princeton Historical Review and Editor-in-Chief of The Nassau Weekly. For the Princeton Asylum Project, he researched conditions in asylum seekers' countries of origin, and was an active member of an organization advocating for an end to mass incarceration. He spent a summer interning for StoryCorps. Knowing that Irish leaders, like Daniel O’Connell, were staunch abolitionists and, conversely, that many Irish had been slaveholders, and that many Irish Americans were among the most outspoken working-class supporters of slavery, Sam researches how transatlantic slavery and abolitionism influenced the trajectory of both Ireland and the US. Planning a career as a scholar of transatlantic slavery and labor history, Sam wants to combine his passion for history with his commitment to social justice.