Born and raised in New York City, Sophie Prado-Tucker graduated from Occidental College in 2025 with a BA in History and Art History. As an undergraduate, she received a summer research fellowship to investigate American women missionaries in China from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, earning distinction for her subsequent thesis. She also served as a Writing Advisor, Art History Peer Tutor, and President of the History Society. Her background in the arts led her to intern at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and the Autry Museum of the American West.
Following graduation, Sophie completed a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Taiwan, where she spent eleven months teaching English to students in grades 1–6 at an elementary school in Changhua County. During her time in Taiwan, she developed her pedagogical approach, began studying Mandarin, and learned to play mahjong.
At Columbia and the LSE, Sophie hopes to explore the intertwined histories of the British and American empires, using missionaries and missionary societies to examine how imperial powers shaped and deployed ideas about race, gender, and religion through education and print media. She is particularly drawn to feminist and postcolonial theories and hopes to incorporate them into her work. Her interest in missionary societies also extends to the provenance and circulation of cultural heritage under empire, particularly how these institutions facilitated the movement of cultural objects into European and American collections.
