2026 Scheidt Undergraduate Research Assistant Fellowship Awarded to Soygun Ismayil

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research has awarded the 2026 Charles E. Scheidt Undergraduate Research Assistant Fellowship to USC undergraduate student Soygun Ismayil.

The Charles E. Scheidt Undergraduate Research Assistant Fellowship enables an outstanding USC undergraduate student from any discipline to assist international fellows and visiting scholars at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, shadowing emerging and senior scholars across disciplines for two semesters. Participating in and contributing to cutting-edge interdisciplinary scholarly research, this fellowship enables students to learn research methods from the most innovative scholars in the fields of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, explore USC’s unique resources and collections in these fields, and build valuable analytical, research, and communication skills.

Soygun Ismayil is a junior at USC pursuing a B.A. in both History and English, with a minor in Spatial Sciences. His interests include creative writing and the study of history, especially themes of imperialism and colonization. He is an editor for The Scroll, an online journal featuring undergraduate research in History at USC, and he volunteers at the Joint Educational Project, assisting teachers in K-12 classrooms.

His past work experience includes tutoring and teaching in a variety of settings and communities, both in person and online, from York and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania to Baton Rouge, Phoenix, and Miami. He has served as an Ignite Fellow for Teach for America where he tutored third-grade students, a Teaching Fellow for Breakthrough Pittsburgh where he taught seventh-grade students, and a Math Tutor for Step-Up Tutoring, where he tutored children from the second to fourth grades in math, reading, and writing. His past research experience includes a summer internship at the National Institutes of Health.