While Michigan is far from his home in Oklahoma, Josh Cochran '00 said he was drawn to the state after attending cross country camp in the Upper Peninsula. The invitation he received to attend the annual Spectrum Scholarship Competition held in February helped set his sights on Aquinas, and his interest grew during the competition when he and a few other participants borrowed trays from the Wege Cafeteria and went sledding in the Regina Bowl. His decision was ultimately made though, when he saw the quality of the liberal arts education. “It’s a good intellectual setting to prepare for the life of the mind,” he said.

Cochran always had an interest in history, and coming to Aquinas only encouraged his enthusiasm. “[The class] World in Crisis blew my mind,” he said. “I like history because you can get at what is producing change over time. It challenges us to dig deep and recognize the complex processes at work.” The interesting courses and the supportive faculty helped Cochran secure his path in studying history and political science.

During his time at Aquinas Cochran participated in the Ireland study abroad program to Tully Cross. He traveled there in 1998, a time when the group did not undergo an excursion to Northern Ireland, due to conflict in the country. However, he and a friend took the chance to visit Belfast just two weeks after the Good Friday Agreement was signed. “I remember it being weirdly calm up there,” he said. “There was still tension, but it was getting resolved.” The agreement was signed in Belfast and it declared peace in Northern Ireland.

The trip to Ireland helped put things in perspective for Cochran. “It was a moment of scale for me. We live in a big world,” he said, “but the people there [in Ireland] weren’t really that different from back home in Oklahoma.”

In addition to studying in Ireland, Cochran has also conducted research at various archives in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands for his graduate studies on the Vietnam War at the University of Iowa. Cochran conducted interviews with many American expatriates in Europe about the anti-war movement. He began preserving oral histories and writing about people who had not previously been written about.

“I am interested in understanding the relationship between ideas of patriotism within U.S. political culture and the growing transnational activism that proliferated as borders became more porous throughout the twentieth century, allowing people, ideas, and capital to move and adapt in new settings,” Cochran said. His work utilized the previously mentioned archives’ records that were “generated by antiwar organizations and individuals as well as official government agencies that monitored their activities.” Cochran used this information to further understand and preserve the memory of the activism of expatriates.

During the spring 2015 semester, Cochran spoke to history professor Dr. Jason Duncan’s Vietnam War class discussing his dissertation topic on the global anti-war movement. Dr. Duncan said, “He did an outstanding job telling our students about his research and giving them an example of what Aquinas students can achieve in wider world of academics after they graduate.”

Cochran received his Ph. D. in August 2014 in Contemporary U.S. and World Affairs. He said he was interested particularly in how “ordinary individuals” participate in the debate about foreign policy; he wanted to give them their own narratives to show the impact they have had. “Foreign policy and international relations need to be situated in more than one national context,” Cochran said. “People who cross borders carry with them deeply held ideologies, values, and cultural assumptions, which is often the focus of this field to understand how these attitudes shape global opinions and interactions.”

Cochran’s undergraduate and graduate studies have given him many opportunity for travel. He said his geographic diversity allows him to get a better understanding of the global economy, which he would not have been able to achieve without the help of Aquinas. Cochran is currently working on publishing his dissertation as a book. He lives in Ann Arbor with his wife, whom he met at Aquinas.