Dunbar Students Advance in 2026 National History Day Contest

Several students from Fayette County Public Schools excelled in the Region 4 and virtual contests of National History Day (NHD) in Kentucky and qualified for the 2026 state competition this spring: 

• Junior Individual Performance – Sarah Nur Islam of Winburn Middle School, “Books Against Bullets: Malala’s Fight for the Right to Learn”
• Senior Paper – Jack Gill of Paul Laurence Dunbar High, “To Err is Human, So Design for It: The Mid-Twentieth-Century Revolution that Reframed Blame and Reformed Safety”
• Senior Group Documentary – Vivaan Bhaskar, Harshan Karthik, Yashmit Sadhir, Aiden Song, and Aws Yousef of Dunbar, “Sputnik: A Turning Point in American History”
• Senior Group Documentary – Aarush Kikani and Tomoki Balchunas of Dunbar, “Reform Ignites Revolution: The Story of Nicaragua and the Sandinistas”
• Senior Group Performance – Xiaoshi Huang, Rhea Pradeep, Aryan Rana, and Sahana Sivakumar of Dunbar, “Voices of Vietnam”
• Senior Group Website – Akshay Bassetti Nayakwadi and Aryav Shigaonkar of Dunbar, “Meiji Restoration”

NHD is a project-based learning experience that allows students to explore history that interests them and then compete with a project in one of five categories. They work individually or in small groups to connect their topics to an annual theme such as this year’s “Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History.”

The top third of regional projects advance to the state competition, set for April 11 at the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort. The national contest follows in June at the University of Maryland.