2024-2025 Faculty-Student Research Partnership Program (FSRP)
Faculty-Student Research Partnership Program for 2024-2025!!
The Humanities Institute proudly introduces the 2024-25 Faculty-Student Research Partnerships Program members.
The FSRP aims to foster partnerships between faculty and students, advance research, and enhance skills. Each faculty member selects students to work on mutually beneficial projects. The following Faculty members are participating in the Faculty-Student Research Partnership Program (FSRP), hosted by the Humanities Institute within the College of Liberal Arts.
Explore the projects of our 2024-25 Faculty-Student Research Partnerships. There are 18 outstanding projects, representing three (3) schools/colleges, and thirteen (13) departments/Units below:
Dr. Alex Beasley
Faculty Researcher, Assistant Professor of American Studies, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher, Lillian Marie Nagengast, Graduate Student
Project Name: Tracing the oilfield services industry from World War II through the end of the 20th century.
Brief Project Summary: The current book project explores the oilfield services industry from World War II to the end of the 20th century, showing how the rise of a service-based economy in the U.S. shaped a new approach to U.S. global power and efforts to counter decolonization. It also examines the growth of international investment in U.S. real estate since the 1960s, focusing on policy responses, the governance of emerging financial markets, and the cultural narratives that accompany this new market activity. The research assistant will assist with editing the completed manuscript and securing image permissions for publication. They will also help build and tag a database of relevant primary sources for the new project, which involves searching for additional materials and cataloging them by subject and time period.
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Dr. Daniel Birkholz
Faculty Researcher, Associate Professor of English, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher, Isabella Neubauer, Graduate Student
Project Name: Atlas of a Medieval Life: The Networks and Itineraries of Roger de Breynton
Brief Project Summary: The Atlas of a Medieval Life explores how digital humanities computational methodologies and data-visualization platforms can bring the medieval subfields of literary studies, cartography, and biography into more fruitful dialogue. The project's heart is Roger de Breynton (c.1290-1351), a historically obscure but widely traveled and well-connected Canon of Hereford Cathedral in provincial South-West England. Breynton’s career-long itinerary (or collection of “roads taken”) and extensive social network are fascinating for how they alternately conform to and depart from the geographical experiences and social/institutional norms usually presumed to obtain for the period. Under the umbrella of Atlas, there are two major visual/computational endeavors related to Roger de Breynton and the archives of Hereford Cathedral underway: one featuring historical social network analysis, the other using geospatial data to produce (using StoryMap) a career "Itinerary" for our protagonist. One future undertaking involves machine-reading a trilingual literary miscellany, the celebrated Harley Manuscript of c.1330-40, to which Roger de Breynton and Hereford Cathedral have demonstrable links.
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Dr. Naomi Campa
Faculty Researcher, Assistant Professor of Classics, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher, Lane Anthony Flores, Graduate Student
Project Name: Institutional elements of migration as well as the point of view of migrants themselves in ancient Greece.
Brief Project Summary: This project aims to develop a typology of ancient migration to enable comparative studies both within and beyond antiquity, supported by an open, searchable database. The first phase, starting in the fall, involves finalizing the typology based on defined characteristics of migrants and creating a spreadsheet to catalog instances of Classical Greek migration, including spatial data and text.
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Dr. Craig Campbell
Faculty Researcher, Associate Professor of Anthropology, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher(s), Ian Robertson, and Valeria Gonzalez, Undergraduate Students
Project Name: Mapping Indigenous Texas (MITx) - creating a mapping inventory
Brief Project Summary: Mapping Indigenous Texas (MITx) is a collaborative research initiative led by Drs. Circe Sturm and Craig Campbell. The project aims to educate students about Indigenous Texas and create a digital map to correct misinformation about Indigenous peoples. MITx seeks to counter the perception of Indigenous extinction and provide accurate information about Indigenous peoples in Texas, addressing the need for reliable resources in education, federal administration, and state-Tribal relations. Two undergraduate student researchers will assist faculty PIs by surveying collections across Texas and globally to build a database of maps related to Indigenous presence in Texas. Their tasks include outreach to archives and map libraries and the description and annotation of maps for an annotated database inventory.
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Dr. Danielle Clealand
Faculty Researcher, Associate Professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher, Autumn Reyes, Graduate Student
Project Name: Building Community, Fighting Exclusion: Black Cuban Oral History, 1959-present.
Brief Project Summary: .This project aims to create an open-access digital website titled Building Community, Fighting Exclusion: Black Cuban Oral History, 1959-present. The website will serve as a Black digital archive of oral histories. It will analyze the impact of housing and school segregation, Jim Crow laws, intra-ethnic racism, and post-civil rights racial politics on Afro-Latinx communities, specifically through the experiences of Black Cubans. It will be the first public digital space to archive the often-silenced oral histories of Black Cubans in Miami, highlighting their community, resistance, and exclusion and re-narrating the story of Cuban immigration post-1959 Cuban Revolution. While all oral histories have been collected, tasks such as transcription, editing of interviews, archival material collection, and website design are still pending.
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Dr. Jonathan Cortez
Faculty Researcher,Assistant Professor of History, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher(s), Alejandra Vadillo, and Leah Tharakan, Undergraduate Students
Project Name: “The History of Immigration Camps”
Brief Project Summary: The research project, led by Dr. Jonathan Cortez at The University of Texas at Austin, explores the history of immigration camps as mechanisms of confinement for racialized migrant populations along the US-Mexico border in the 20th century. The project is part of Dr. Cortez’s book manuscript. A research assistants (RA) will help with Chapter One, focusing on immigration camps during the Chinese Exclusion era, conducting both online and in-person archival research, and using tools like Excel, Dropbox, Zotero, and Google Docs for organization and annotation.
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Dr. Ashley D. Farmer
Faculty Researcher, Associate Professor of AADS & History, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher, Ty Chaney, Graduate Student
Project Name: "Watched: The Black Women Tracked by the FBI"
Brief Project Summary: The book “Watched: The Black Women Tracked by the FBI” will be the first to chronicle the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) through the experiences of Black women who were surveilled. The author (Dr. Farmer) has conducted archival research at the National Archives and seeks a student to help organize, sort, and transcribe files and conduct secondary research to contextualize these primary sources. This work will aid in constructing the first two chapters of the book and provide the student with valuable research skills, insights into historical scholarship, source analysis, and history field construct monographs.
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Dr. S. Scott Graham
Faculty Researcher, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, , College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher, James Lifton, Graduate Student
Project Name: UT STS - science and technology studies
Brief Project Summary: The primary aims of this project are (a) to curate a capacious bibliography of STS scholarship by UT faculty and (b) to develop a UT-focused AI-STS open syllabus. This summer faculty-student research partnership is open to graduate students in history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, geography, American studies, rhetoric, government, and related departments. Ideal candidates for this opportunity will have some prior grounding in STS or related inquiry traditions.
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Dr. Neville Hoad
Faculty Researcher, Associate Professor of English, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher, Jack Murphy, Graduate Student
Project Name: "Oscar Wilde and the Anecdotal Archive" will be a book chapter in a monograph that I am beginning currently entitled "The Portrait of Mr. O.W.H."
Brief Project Summary: The chapter, originally a 10-page talk, delves into the checkered history of Oscar Wilde’s literary and personal archive. After Wilde’s 1895 trial for “gross indecency,” many of his letters were reportedly burned. The early 20th century saw a market for forged Wilde letters, now housed in the William Andrews Clark Library. Wilde foresaw this mix of real, lost, and forged items in his pseudo-literary criticism, “The Portrait of Mr. WH,” about a boy actor named Willie Hughes, who supposedly inspired Shakespeare’s sonnets, with only a forged painting as evidence. The Harry Ransom Center holds the third-largest collection of Wilde materials. The author seeks graduate student assistance to explore related collections, especially those of Frank Harris, Wilde’s first and notoriously unreliable biographer, to understand how Wilde’s contemporaries wrote about him and his work.
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Dr. Julia Mickenberg
Faculty Researcher, Professor of American Studies, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher, Sheldyn Ely, Undergraduate Student
Project Name: Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature
Brief Project Summary: Dr. Mickenberg is collaborating with Philip Nel, Distinguished Professor of English at Kansas State University, on a second volume of our 2008 book, Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature. The original book featured 43 out-of-print works for young children from the 20th century. With more material now digitized, we are compiling a list of potential texts covering various topics (e.g., environment, peace, racism) and intersectional identities (e.g., gender, race, sexuality). We aim to include diverse genres and time periods. They seek a research assistant to locate, read, summarize, and evaluate these texts for contemporary relevance. The assistant will also conduct biographical and contextual research on the authors and illustrators. Regular meetings will be held to discuss the project’s development, and the assistant will receive a copy of the first volume as a model.
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Dr. Luisa Nardini
Faculty Researcher, Professor of Musicology, College of Fine Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher, Nina Gary, Graduate Student
Project Name: Prosulas, Chants, and Hypertexts
Brief Project Summary: Prosulas are short texts added to existing melodies for Christian liturgy in Europe from the 10th to the 13th centuries, offering insights into the spirituality of their composers and performers. They transform original chants in ways comparable to modern hypertext. My focus on southern Italy highlights the region’s multicultural and inter-religious environment and cultural exchanges. The website for this project is live with all content uploaded, but it needs to finalize interactive components, complete audio and visual annotations, and verify hyperlinks.
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Dr. Aaron O'Connell
Faculty Researcher, Associate Professor of History, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher, Saghar Bozorgi, Graduate Student
Project Name: "Global War on Terror"
Brief Project Summary: The book on the "Global War on Terror", under contract with Simon & Schuster Press. It covers US military operations and political debates (at home and abroad) from 2001 to 2021. The author seeks a research assistant proficient in Arabic to research opinion pieces and critiques of US actions. The book is halfway done, with work in fall 2024 focusing on 2011-2021.
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Dr. Marcelo Paixão
Faculty Researcher, Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher, Brenda Moreira Marques, Graduate Student
Project Name: Study the racial and ethnic categories in the censuses of Latin American countries between 2000-2020
Brief Project Summary: This project examines racial and ethnic categories in Latin American censuses from 2000-2020. It aims to understand how different classification methods (based on appearance, ancestry, or ethnicity) affect the visibility of historically discriminated groups and the potential of these statistics to inform public policies. This is particularly intriguing given the region’s history of mestizaje and racial democracy despite being one of the most unequal regions globally.
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Dr. Donnie Johnson Sackey
Faculty Researcher, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric & Writing, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher, Sophia Guild, Undergraduate Student
Project Name: Study of Consumer Confidence Reports (CCRs), or known as “Annual Drinking Water Quality Report"
Brief Project Summary: Consumer Confidence Reports (CCRs), also known as Annual Drinking Water Quality Reports, are federally mandated documents that summarize local drinking water information from the previous year. Originating from the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act amendments (SDWA), CCRs aim to raise consumer awareness about water sources, delivery processes, and safety, enabling informed decisions about drinking water. Despite their importance, CCR design is under-researched and often influenced by engineers, scientists, and regulators, which can alienate the general public. This project has three phases: Phase :1 Qualitative assessment of CCR designs in the United States. Phase 2: Usability assessment of the documents., and Phase 3: Co-creation workshops with residents in Austin, TX, and Flint, MI, to improve CCR design.
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Dr. Circe Sturm
Faculty Researcher, Professor of Anthropology, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher, Christine Sánchez, Graduate Student
Project Name: UT STS - science and technology studies
Brief Project Summary: Mapping Indigenous Texas (MITx) is a collaborative research initiative led by Drs. Circe Sturm and Craig Campbell. The project aims to educate students about Indigenous Texas and create a digital map to correct misinformation about Indigenous peoples. MITx seeks to counter the perception of Indigenous extinction and provide accurate information about Indigenous peoples in Texas, addressing the need for reliable resources in education, federal administration, and state-Tribal relations. Two undergraduate student researchers will assist faculty PIs by surveying collections across Texas and globally to build a database of maps related to Indigenous presence in Texas. Their tasks include outreach to archives and map libraries and the description and annotation of maps for an annotated database inventory.
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Dr. Michael Telch
Faculty Researcher, Professor of Psychology, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher, Galen Cassidy, Graduate Student
Project Name: Assess psychological distress, suicidal ideation, and substance use among transgender or gender expansive (TGE) based on state legislation and time, utilizing existing large-scale national community surveys conducted in 2015 and 2022.
Brief Project Summary: In recent years, there has been a rise in legislation aimed at restricting the rights of transgender and gender-expansive (TGE) individuals, affecting areas like drag performances, gender-affirming care for minors, sports participation, and public restroom use. Changes to government ID policies and school discussions on gender identity are also included. These stressors can significantly impact mental health outcomes. The project aims to test if those in states that passed anti-TGE legislation in 2021 or 2022 would exhibit poorer mental health outcomes in 2022 compared to those in states without such laws and if these disparities have emerged or widened between the 2015 and 2022 surveys.
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Dr. Amy Thompson
Faculty Researcher, Assistant Professor of Geography & The Environment, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researcher(s), Claudio Hernandez, and Shreya Agrawal, Undergraduate Students
Project Name: Lidar data and digitized legacy data (i.e., old maps) to measure the sizes of Maya households
Brief Project Summary: This research project uses lidar and digitized legacy data to measure Maya household sizes and model social units within ancient cities to understand variations in inequality. The project explores past inequality dynamics by calculating Gini scores and developing quantitative metrics for public goods and urban features. Data spans over 60 Maya communities from the Late Preclassic to modern times, with plans to expand to other periods. Students will gain GIS experience, digitize maps, model neighborhoods, and study urban features, contributing to multi-scalar inequality research and potentially co-authoring journal articles.
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Dr. Cathery Yeh
Faculty Researcher, Assistant Professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Assistant Professor, Center for Asian American Studies, College of Liberal Arts | The University of Texas at Austin
Student Researchers, Hamza Shahid Ahmed and Harikrishnan Mamparambath, Undergraduate Students
Project Name: The DREAM Project
Brief Project Summary: The DREAM Project, a four-year design and development project funded by the National Science Foundation, is grounded in commitments to inclusive, community-driven mathematics teaching and leading through collaborative lesson study with teachers, families, and communities. The graduate or undergraduate research assistant will collaborate with project members and school communities (e.g., families, teacher leaders, teachers, and administrators) in classrooms and Austin schools to develop, study, and refine a community-centered, job-embedded teacher leader (TLs) professional development (PD) model.
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