Postdoc and Nurse Historian Capucao Earns Top Dissertation Prize, Book Contract, for Disability Work
“Still processing.”
That’s how Ren Capucao, the School's inaugural Mellon Race, Place, and Equity Postdoctoral Research Associate in the History of Nursing and Healthcare, is thinking about his latest accolade: securing the top dissertation prize from the Disability History Association and the University of Illinois Press, along with a book contract.
“I never imagined using disability as mode of critical analysis in my research,” said Capucao, who grew up in Hampton Roads, VA, the son of retired nurse Jolly Capucao and mentee of professor Dominique Tobbell, Bjoring Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry director. “It just happened over time. I’ve really learned about disability along the way, and find, as I dig deeper, that ableism undercuts every other system of power.”
"For an interdisciplinary scholar to come from a nursing history degree and be recognized in this way is a great affirmation of the importance of Ren’s work. I'm just so proud of him."
Dominique Tobbell, Centennial Distinguished Professor and Bjoring Center director
A Shifting Focus on Filipino Nurses' Experiences
When his project began in 2019, Capucao studied the narratives and pathways of Filipino nurses who migrated to the U.S. en masse following the second half of the 20th century, lured by the promise of jobs and a new life in a country desperate for nurses. These nurses faced loneliness, racism, and inequality, but built, over time, rich communities centered on culture, family, and care.
But theirs wasn’t an easy path. As he collected stories of Filipino nurses during U.S. colonization of the Philippines, Capucao observed a trend: their bodies and minds were worn down by the structural inequalities they faced in the United States, stress that caused them to suffer from a cascade of ill effects, including depression, chronic illness, and dementia in some, and led others to die by suicide.
This "weathering" from everyday, ordinary experiences, as public health researcher Arline Geronimus called it, altered Capucao's investigative lens, changing his sense of Filipinos’ nursing history and the American nursing profession of which they were a part.
"Weathering's" Impact on Well-Being
“The wear these populations experience can seem invisible," Capucao explained, "and while it’s not tangible, it’s powerful. When I read about the way these nurses died in the past, I was surprised, honestly, at least initially. When stress accumulates in your body over time, and historical traumas build up, it increases susceptibility to disability and chronic illness. These Filipino nurses were working hard to assimilate, which ended up causing harm to their health.”
His trajectory into the field of disability studies is also deeply personal.
“Watching my own mother, who retired after I became a nurse in 2019, and then quickly showed signs of dementia, got me thinking about it, too,” Capucao said. “What is life after work? Is that the reward for working hard for her whole life?”
A New Book Arises from its Dissertation Foundation
Capucao, who earned a Fulbright Scholarship in 2022, will use his dissertation, "Pressed into Starched Whites: Nursing (Dis)Ability in Filipino/American History," as the new book’s foundation, spending the next two years writing and adding chapters focused on the lived experience of Filipino nurses recruited both to Hawaiian sugar plantations and City Hospital in Cleveland, OH.
The work is a complement to his Mellon postdoctoral research, which is UVA-led initiative developed in 2020, with five-year, $5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to prepare new and emerging faculty scholars for tenure track roles about issues specific to race, place, and equity. With Bjoring Center director and professor Dominique Tobbell, Capucao's also helping develop teaching modules using the Race in Healthcare web site into undergraduate- and graduate-level nursing courses.
"When stress accumulates in your body over time, and historical traumas build up, it increases susceptibility to disability and chronic illness. These Filipino nurses were working hard to assimilate, which ended up causing harm to their health.”
Ren Capucao, postdoctoral research fellow
Tobbell called Capucao's research "highly original and powerful."
“For an interdisciplinary scholar to come from a nursing history degree and be recognized in this way is a great affirmation of the importance of Ren’s work,” Tobbell said. “I’m just so proud of him.”
For Capucao, who has vivid dreams about the Filipino nurses he’s studied and interviewed along his path, it’s a chance to clarify and expand upon a nursing narrative and recognize that, “what these Filipino nurses did shapes what I do now, and will help me disrupt these unequal forces from history from reproducing themselves.”
Capucao graduated from the CNL master's program in 2019 and the PhD program in 2025. An American Association for the History of Nursing H31 grantee, a Nurses Educational Fund M. Louise Fitzpatrick Scholarship awardee, a Verhonick awardee and a Brodie Scholar, he has presented his work widely at regional and international conferences, served as editor of Nursing Clio, and worked as editor-in-chief for the Philippine Nurses Association of Virginia, of which he is a member. His 2019 exhibit, “A Culture to Care,” was funded by the Virginia Humanities, the Philippine Nurses Association of America, and the Philippine Nurses Association of Virginia, and is a lens into work that is informed by both his personal and professional journeys.
Currently, he's teaching an American Studies undergraduate course—Disability and Healthcare in Filipino/American History—and recently contributed a biographical essay about his mom that will be on display at an upcoming history exhibit, We the People, at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond opening in March 2026.
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