Research Clusters

The DCII provides a home for informal, collaborative groups of scholars who wish to meet together to discuss and advance shared interdisciplinary interests. Clusters are convened by faculty, staff, and graduate students across campus, and are designed to benefit participants’ research or teaching activities.

Clusters meet at least twice each semester for meetings and events, including holding reading groups, bringing in speakers, organizing workshops, and developing joint research projects. The DCII provides funding and organizational support for these activities. Clusters are open to participants from any and all disciplines and departments at 51²è¹Ý, and some Clusters also welcome participants from other universities and the broader DFW community.

Below is a list of active Research Clusters. Faculty, staff, and students interested in participating in a Cluster should contact the Cluster conveners.

Research Clusters for AY 2024-25

Description

This research cluster will promote an interdisciplinary examination of academic support programs and their relationship to college student retention. Our aim is to explore first and second-year academic initiatives and their retention-related outcomes on underrepresented student populations, with an emphasis on Black and Latinx students, Pell-eligible students, and first-generation college students. Goals of the cluster include four group meetings, a symposium, and the development of research to be used for publication or conference presentations. This research cluster welcomes faculty, staff, and graduate students interested in college student retention across all disciplines.

Conveners

Description

51²è¹Ý has many strengths to support research in the Data Sciences. One of these strengths has been the creation of the Data Science Cluster divided in three interrelated groups: Data Core, Technology-Enhanced Immersive Learning (TEIL), and Health Analytics. This Interdisciplinary group will have expertise in areas that include the learning sciences, artificial intelligence, machine learning, technology-enhanced learning, and assessment. The purpose of this specific Cluster's activities is to meet regularly in order to maximize the opportunities for immediate and long term success of this intercollege, interdisciplinary commitment by 51²è¹Ý.

Conveners

Description

This research cluster addresses equity issues in support of transfer student success and retention at 51²è¹Ý. These efforts are significant for its focused research and collaborative approach. The 51²è¹Ý Transfer Summit will kick off the research cluster’s efforts by presenting data on equity issues specific to 51²è¹Ý, building the university’s understanding of transfer students. The data produced for the 51²è¹Ý Transfer Summit data will guide monthly meetings and working groups in identifying and addressing key challenges. By fostering collaboration among faculty, staff, and students, these efforts aim to produce data-driven solutions with a lasting impact.

Conveners: 

Dustin Grabsch, dgrabsch@smu.edu

Kate Bell-Miller, kebell@smu.edu

Description:

This cluster explores current uses and potential applications and implications of AR/VR as a learning, teaching, and collaborative tool. In its inaugural year, the cluster will host two Lunch and Learns focusing on current literature, best practices, and examples of the implementation of AR/VR in higher education, and across disciplines on the 51²è¹Ý campus in particular. It will also run a pilot study evaluating the use of 3 language-learning AR/VR applications among a sample of 50 undergraduate World Languages students to evaluate the impact of integrating AR/VR in higher ed classrooms on motivation, vocabulary retention, and second language acquisition. 

Conveners:

Aria Cabot, acabot@smu.edu

Talia Weltmann-Cisneros, tweltmancisneros@smu.edu

Description

This research cluster proposes to bring together faculty, staff, and graduate students with interests in Asian and Asian American studies. We intend to focus on two major and overlapping areas of scholarship and teaching:

  1. The intersection of Asian studies and Asian American studies
  2. The experiences and needs of Asian American and Pacific Islander community members at 51²è¹Ý and the broader higher-education sector.

Our goals are to explore new research space and opportunities for collaboration, to advance creative teaching in Asian Studies, and to foster a campus environment inclusive of diverse perspectives.

Conveners 

Description:

51²è¹Ý’s collections encompass a wide array of objects spanning from the Pleistocene era to modern times. These specimens include fossils of long-extinct flora and fauna, funerary relics from Ancient Egypt, fragmented remnants of ancient civilizations, extensive archaeological and historical artifacts from professional excavations in Texas and New Mexico, medieval manuscripts, early printed books, pioneering examples of photography, rare cinematic footage, in addition to a diverse array of objects, painting, drawings, and prints by renowned Texas Regionalists, Master of Fine Arts alumni, Indigenous American artists, and Spanish artists. Despite being housed in various buildings, departments, and colleges across the campus, these materials all share a common mission of safeguarding cultural heritage for the benefit of the entire 51²è¹Ý community- faculty, staff, and students- as well as for future generations. 

Conveners:

Matthew Boulanger, mboulanger@smu.edu

Anne Lenhart, alenhart@smu.edu

Kacy Hollenback, khollenback@smu.edu

Holly Jeffcoat, hjeffcoat@smu.edu

Description:

The Catalyst for Good cluster initiative at 51²è¹Ý aims to provide a centralized platform that unites the various individual efforts in philanthropy, social impact, and non-profit engagement across campus into an interdisciplinary academic and practical exploration cluster. Each of 51²è¹Ý’s colleges has elements of social impact, philanthropy, or non-profit studies, yet there is no central venue for these efforts to converge. The lack of a central hub has been a significant gap in fully leveraging the potential of 51²è¹Ý’s diverse academic resources.

Conveners:

Megan Heber, mheber@smu.edu

Willie Baronet, wbaronet@smu.edu

Description

To foster a more integrated and interactive research environment and culture amongst specialists in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience at 51²è¹Ý and in the metroplex through the organization of public talks and research workshops, which will also help enrich and develop the new 51²è¹Ý minors in Cognitive Science and Neuroscience.

Conveners

Description:

Understanding relations with China and Russia could not be more critical in both the United States and the world. This research cluster proposes to bring together faculty, staff, and graduate students with interests in the Cold War and the New Cold War, broadly defined. We intend to focus on two major and overlapping areas of scholarship:

  1. How Cold War topics and themes explain current debates about international affairs and domestic politics
  2. The impact and legacy of the Cold War versus the New Cold War

This cluster will be of particular interest to those in history, political science, international relations, economics, and business.

 

Conveners:

Drew Brozovich, dbrozovich@smu.edu

Holly Harris, hlharris@smu.edu

Description

The Culture, Mind, and Brain Research Cluster started as a seminar during the 2021-2022 academic year. The seminar was co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology at 51²è¹Ý and the Department of Psychiatry at UT Southwestern Medical Center. The goal of the seminar was to foster collaborations between students and colleagues around shared interests related to the study of the mind and brain from western and nonwestern perspectives.

This coming year, the Culture, Mind, and Brain Research Cluster aim to expand on the success of the seminar to incorporate the interests of likeminded faculty at 51²è¹Ý and strengthen the bridge between 51²è¹Ý and UTSW in this research area.

Conveners

Description

The purpose of this research cluster is to advance an interdisciplinary and collaborative reading of Dante's Divine Comedy, exploring the relevance of his work on current scholarship in the fields of literature and theology. We believe that this kind of reading, accompanied by some invited Dante scholars, will nourish our teaching in our fields of expertise, it will help to identify specific aspects that could be developed as part of the research agenda of each one of the participants of the group, and it could awaken the interest of other scholars in 51²è¹Ý for Dante.

Conveners

Description

The Data Science for Social Good Research Cluster arises out of 51²è¹Ý’s Summer REU, entitled “Data Science for Social Good.” Under the direction of Dr. Lynne Stokes, 11 undergraduate students from Texas and across the country came to the 51²è¹Ý campus for training in data science and to work with 51²è¹Ý faculty.  Faculty who served as mentors supervised students’ work with data in four areas: economic development, voting fairness, the Dallas County Inland Port’s effect on the community’s access to transportation services, and  the fairness of Dallas County eviction and their effect on families. This Research Cluster brings faculty together with others from across the campus and enable them to collaborate outside of the REU as they continue work on their individual projects. 

Conveners

Description

Through this research cluster, we aim to elevate the conversation around Human-Centered Design research and are excited to use this space to share our theories, methods, and tools with a broader research community. 

Conveners

Description:

To improve STEM teaching and overcome persistent underrepresentation issues, there is a need to better understand strategies for disrupting microaggressions in STEM context. Targeted interventions must be developed to equip faculty with the skills and confidence needed to identify and respond to microaggressions as they occur. The proposed work of this cluster will explore existing approaches to addressing microaggressions. The cluster will also collaborate to develop a theory of change to support faculty in identifying and disrupting microaggressions in STEM contexts.

Conveners:

Jeanna Wieselmann, jwieselmann@smu.edu

Kelyln Rola, krola@smu.edu

Janille Smith-Colin, jsmithcolin@smu.edu

Description

Two critical and interconnected issues facing the United States and Texas today are Earth Hazards and National Security. With existing and emerging challenges associated with climate change and an increasingly multipolar world, addressing these challenges requires research on natural and human systems, technical innovation and advanced monitoring and data analyses approaches. The research cluster brings together researchers (faculty, staff, students) to review significant research ongoing or planned at 51²è¹Ý that addresses hazard and/or national security challenges with the goal of developing new and innovative avenues of research.

Conveners

Description

This research cluster will create a university-wide community of faculty, graduate students, and researchers in energy and environmental fields, such as engineering, law, business, and social science. This community will engage in research sharing to remove barriers between energy and environment, advancing holistic systems thinking to address critical issues such as resilience, climate change, energy poverty, and environmental justice. This cluster will build relationships and networks to encourage interdisciplinary relationship, with the goal of fostering an integrated and vibrant environment for grant applications, multi-author publishing, and cross-pollination of pedagogy.

Conveners

Description:

The ERAH Graduate Student Conference Cluster is centered around the yearly ERAH Conference. This cluster and conference promotes interdisciplinary research and community between PhD students in 51²è¹Ý’s English, Religious Studies, Anthropology, and History departments. In addition to the conference in October, the cluster also hosts a number of events focused on workshopping and developing papers for publication; together, we create a working group that seeks to produce rigorous and interdisciplinary scholarship and to foster relationship between Dedman’s graduate programs.

Conveners:

Ally Barber, barbera@smu.edu

Lindsey McClure, lmcclure@smu.edu

Nicolette Edwards, nicolettee@smu.edu

Ashton Reynolds, treynolds@smu.edu

Description

The purpose of this cluster is to collaborate with the Department of Anthropology and other interested university personnel to discuss and develop a research strategy to address two specific aims: i) assess baseline stress levels in the 51²è¹Ý populations, and ii) develop an EIM led intervention (physical activity, meditation, or breathing exercise) designed to improve coping mechanisms, enhance parasympathetic tone and lower overall cortisol measures. This collaborative effort will provide a starting point for evaluating the "medicinal" impact of EIM-OC led initiatives on physiological variables in participants. 

Conveners

Description

This cluster seeks to discuss, cultivate, and promote a culture of vigorously free and respectfully civil speech at 51²è¹Ý by way of discussion, intracampus partnerships and activities, and public events.

Conveners

Description

The research cluster brings together faculty, graduate students and staff (IT & Library) who are interested in GIS (Geographic Information Systems, for mapping and spatial analysis). In the last two years the interdisciplinary group GIS@51²è¹Ý has made great strides in:

  1. Connecting 51²è¹Ý faculty, graduate and undergraduate students who may be working independently in the area of spatial analysis
  2. Setting up a GIS lab in the Fondren library
  3. Bringing in leading experts on GIS from top-universities such as Stanford to run workshops
  4. Organizing activities such as a Mapathon to promote the use of GIS to undergraduates and the broader community at 51²è¹Ý.

GIS@51²è¹Ý is a true interdisciplinary group, bringing together faculty and students from across campus.

Conveners

Description

This research cluster unites faculty from a range of academic and professional disciplines to discuss and define a set of shared goals and best practices to provide students with real-world, global perspectives and transferable skills aligned with skills employers seek in the contemporary workplace. Topics of discussion include curricular innovation, academic and corporate partnerships for internships and field work abroad and at home, and the assessment of and integration with 51²è¹Ý’s Common Curriculum requirements with a focus on the integration of world languages and cultures for professional purposes across the curriculum.

Conveners

Description

The rise of populist nationalist totalitarianism threatens democratic stability at home and globally. The Hannah Arendt Reading Group cluster will examine and learn from selected works by one of the most important political thinkers of the twentieth century —one whose work illuminates the threats of our time.

Conveners

Description

In a pluralistic democracy, healthcare institutions are the places where our society conducts some of its most profound moral deliberations. When we make treatment decisions for those at the edges of human existence—when humans are coming into and passing out of existence—we are forced to reckon with very basic questions about the good. What is a human? How does our account of human dignity fit into our overall understanding of the universe (is it a dignity that stands out in relief against the canvas of an infinite and meaningless universe; is it a dignity that is perfectly integrated into a meaningful universe that is created and loved by God?). It is in these institutions that we are required to be honest about the beliefs we hold most deeply even when—or especially because—we are committed to cordoning off some of these beliefs in our official political life, in order to build and maintain the conditions for a reasonable and just pluralistic constitutional democracy.  

We propose to convene a cluster that focuses on this intersection of bioethics, moral reasoning, and political philosophy. The immediate work of the cluster will be to convene a reading group around a recent and influential book for the fall 2022 semester, culminating in a workshop/public lecture with the author in spring 2023 semester.

Conveners

Description

The Reenact/Reenacting Cluster will examine and enact historically scientific episodes by constructing and reproducing salient experimental investigations. Research on the development of scientific reasoning/modeling reveals the pivotal role of constructing and refining measurement instruments and developing embodied physical skills to deploy them. informed by past and present practices in historical cases, we will focus on episodes where material and instrumental dimensions of science are salient, and where modern fabrication tools can replicate scientists'' successful and failed instruments. As we pursue experiments in historical replication, we will also develop pedagogical materials informed by those experiences.

Conveners

Description

The “Medieval Matters” Research Cluster plans a year-long initiative to reinvigorate the strong, diverse, and engaged community of medievalists among the faculty and students at 51²è¹Ý and in the metroplex area. As a working group, we will examine fresh methodological approaches to the study of the Middle Ages with the goal of generating opportunities for new collaborative teaching and research across disciplinary boundaries. Among other possibilities, we envision a fully vetted book and digital project (with national and international contributors) that advances current understandings of the uses and limits of transdisciplinary teaching/research in the Middle Ages.

Conveners

Description

This research cluster brings together faculty, staff, and graduate students with interests in indigenous studies. The focus will be on traditional and contemporary indigenous forms of culture, language, art, knowledge, economy, ecology, politics, and identity, as well as contemporary issues surrounding sovereignty, tradition, human rights, intellectual property rights, heritage, health, environmental justice, and development. Our year-long goals involve:

  1. Creating and fostering a viable campus community at 51²è¹Ý
  2. Identifying areas for collaborative research
  3. Defining existing and future teaching needs

Conveners

Description

Feminism has once again become a culturally approved term, but the connection between feminist scholarship and social change has thinned in the past decade. A group of eighteen 51²è¹Ý faculty and graduate students came together on May 5 with philanthropist/feminist scholar Helen LaKelly Hunt and long-time activist Vivian Castleberry to talk about Hunt’s new book on the religious roots of American feminism in the abolitionist movement. During that conversation, we realized that 51²è¹Ý’s feminist community could itself benefit from revitalization. As scholars and teachers, we use the tools of feminist analysis but we remain uncertain about “correct” relations between our scholarly and reformist agendas.

We’d like to think through this question, among others, in a cluster next year that would have six notable speakers and several small discussion sections. We would also engage the Women and Gender Studies Program in this project. Our goal is to produce an edited set of essays that poses questions about the place of feminist visibility in the academy. We want to develop the field of feminist thought further as we engage in both an embodiment of and conscious reflection upon feminist discourse. Can we see feminist theory in the service of social change?

Conveners

Description

Over the course of a year, many people find themselves in poverty and lacking shelter. Whether due to the pandemic, mental illness, diminished opportunity, unfortunate life choices, or trauma in their past. Poverty, particularly homelessness, is a symptom of a deeper, broader problem. One's beliefs about the causes of homelessness can significantly impact the level and longevity of support given. At a time when students are exploring who they are and what they stand for, universities have the opportunity to introduce them to coursework and experiences that challenge their thinking and perception. This research cluster aims to add to the ongoing undergraduate perceptions of poverty/homeless research, and further bolster current homeless awareness efforts on campus.

Conveners

Description:

The research cluster brings together a community of scholars interested in exploring pressing questions related to the environment, health, and development in a primarily global context. This includes scholars of business, ecology, economics, environmental studies and engineering, law, liberal arts, and public health. This research cluster develops fresh perspectives and innovative avenues of research at the nexus of human and environment health in an era of rapid climate change. The cluster hosts a bi-annual speaker series and produce a set of edited essays on burgeoning topics related to global environmental health.

Conveners:

Anna Mance, amance@smu.edu

Nathan Cortez, ncortez@smu.edu

Description:

The overarching question here is what it means to be human in the context of science and culture by examining the behaviors humans use to observe, explore, and analyze themselves and their surroundings. “Being human” today has evolved into advocating, protecting, and defending people’s understandings of science, facts, etc. This project will engage with the learning community of teachers and students as STEAM initiatives provide strong intersections of science, art, and culture. The goal is to curate a proposal and pilot to secure external funding and thoughtful engagement of STEAM programming for young audiences, educators, and everyone interested in science. 

Conveners:

Nicolay Tsaarevsky, nvt@smu.edu

Kate Montgomery, kmontgom@smu.edu

Sara Romersberger, sromer@smu.edu

Description:

This research cluster establishes a university-wide community of faculty, students, and researchers in outer space science & resources, encompassing disciplines such as astrophysics, engineering, science, law, and political science. The cluster focuses on research collaboration to bridge gaps between space exploration, resource utilization, and sustainable development areas. The cluster pursues theoretical and experimental research in these varying fields, exploring both fundamental questions of the universe and practical challenges related to governance, exploration, and extraction. This initiative aims to advance systems thinking to address critical issues such as asteroid mining, space debris management, and planetary protection. The cluster fosters interdisciplinary relationships, promoting an integrated environment for securing grants, multi-author publications, and innovative teaching methodologies.

Conveners:

Monika Ehrman, mehrman@smu.edu

Max Ponce Chavez, mponce@smu.edu

Description

This research cluster will create a university-wide community of faculty, graduate students, and research scholars who research or teach in subsurface resource related fields, such as groundwater, geothermal energy, oil & gas, mining, waste heat, carbon capture sequestration, and geologic & paleontologic resources. This community will build relationships and networks to encourage interdisciplinary relationships, with the goal of fostering an integrated and vibrant environment for pursuit of grants; multi-author publishing; and cross-pollination of pedagogy.

Conveners