Research Fellows 2023-24
Glasscock Faculty Research Fellows These fellowships are designed to address a need for funding for research that could not be accomplished otherwise in order to complete a book project, major article or series of articles, or other research project that makes an impact in the field. Fellows participate in the Colloquium Series, which will function […]
Glasscock Faculty Research Fellows
These fellowships are designed to address a need for funding for research that could not be accomplished otherwise in order to complete a book project, major article or series of articles, or other research project that makes an impact in the field. Fellows participate in the Colloquium Series, which will function as a working group for these works-in-progress. Projects are chosen on the basis or their intellectual rigor, scholarly creativity, and potential to make a significant impact in the candidate’s career and field.
Susanneh Bieber | Assistant Professor, Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts
Susanneh Bieber is Assistant Professor in the School of Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts and the School of Architecture at Texas A&M University. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art history with a specific interest in the interactions among visual art, architecture, and the environment, in feminism, and issues of gender, race, and social justice. She is author of American Artists Engage the Built Environment, 1960-1979 (Routledge 2023), and numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Art Journal, American Art, Journal of Architectural Education, the Getty Research Journal, and Panorama. Her article on Donald Judd was awarded the 2017 International Essay Prize by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Terra Foundation for American Art, and an article on Victor Lundy’s inflatable pavilion received the 2020 Scholarship of Design Article Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Bieber’s research has been supported by fellowships at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and at Texas A&M by the Arts and Humanities Fellowship, the Academy of the Visual and Performing Arts, and the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research. Her current book project explores the use of pneumatic technologies across the fields of art, architecture, and engineering.
Maddalena Cerrato | Assistant Professor, International Affairs/Bush School
Maddalena Cerrato is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service. She received her PhD in Political and Theoretical Philosophy in Italy at the Italian Institute for Humanities (Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa). Dr. Cerrato’s main field of studies is contemporary continental philosophy and critical theory. Her research focuses on the intersection of political theory, existential philosophy, and cyber-criticism, and it combines diverse yet contiguous Western traditions of thinking such as deconstruction, post-structuralism, left-Heideggerianism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, feminism, and afropessimism.
Dr. Cerrato has published a scholarly monograph on the practical philosophy of Michel Foucault (now forthcoming in English translation with SUNY UP) and many articles about infrapolitics, nationalism, topology, and autography. Her current book project – provisionally titled Against Order –is primarily concerned with an analysis of the spatial logic organizing political, social, epistemological categories and governing human existence. Finally, Dr. Cerrato is a collaborator in the Glasscock Research Initiative “The Humanities and the Anthropocene: Life, Temporality, Extinction” and she is working on a collaborative writing project on “Autographic Praxis and Infrapolitics in the Age of the Digital Anthropocene.”
Regina Mills | Assistant Professor, English
Regina Marie Mills is an assistant professor of Latinx and Multi-Ethnic Literature. As a first-generation college student, she supports current first-gen students through the First Faculty Mentor program. Her current book project, Invisibility and Influence: A Literary History of US Afrolatinidades examines AfroLatina/x/o life writing through the lens of woman-of-color feminist life writing scholarship. She is currently writing an essay on US-Central American and Central American refugee narratives as a contributor to The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives as well as an essay on the opportunities and challenges inherent in teaching video games in the literature classroom for Teaching Games and Games Studies in the Literature Classroom (an MLA volume).
Kevin O'Sullivan | Associate Professor, English
Kevin M. O’Sullivan is Associate Professor of English at Texas A&M University. His research focuses on early modern poetics (especially in connection to the Tudor-Stuart colonization of Ireland), the history of the book, and digital approaches to early modern studies. His current book project examines the appropriation of the Georgic mode by New English authors to aestheticize plantation efforts in Ireland from the late 1570s through the early 1590s. Dr. O’Sullivan is a co-founder of the award-winning 3Dhotbed Project, which develops open access tools to facilitate bibliographical instruction, and has published widely on matters related to book history and digital humanities in such venues as Knygotyra, RBM, portal: Libraries and the Academy, and College & Research Libraries. Since 2016, he has served as Director of the Book History Workshop, hosted by Texas A&M University Libraries.
Glasscock Graduate Research Fellows
The Glasscock Center for Humanities Research annually funds Graduate Research Fellowships at $2,000 each. To be eligible, students have to be working on a Doctoral dissertation or Masters thesis but could be at the initial stages of their projects. The outcome should be a dissertation or a thesis, or a significant portion thereof. These students will participate in the Colloquium Series and use the experience as a tool to improve their own writing and projects and help each other to improve the quality of the work being produced as a group.
Haley Burke | PhD candidate, Philosophy
Haley is a current PhD student in the Department of Philosophy. She is also working toward a MA in English at Texas A&M University. Ms. Burke focuses on post-Kantian European Philosophy, especially existentialism, hermeneutics, and phenomenology. In her dissertation, Ms. Burke develops recent trends in hermeneutic realism to better understand cosmopolitan space. Her dissertation project builds on her MA thesis concerning Nathaniel Hawthorne’s political ontology and aesthetics. Aside from her research, Ms. Burke is a Graduate Assistant in the Department of Philosophy and the Assistant to the Editor for Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy. She will continue her research as a visiting PhD researcher in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick in Fall 2023.
Elizabeth Carlino | PhD candidate, Geography
Ellie is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Geography and received her M.S. in Environmental Education (2020) and B.S. in Anthropology (2012) from Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, Connecticut. Ellie’s dissertation research analyzes climate change policy and water governance in South Africa. Her work highlights the intersection of law and policy, with emphasis on how policies for dealing with the impacts of climate change affect understandings of and practices related to protecting and administering rights to water. She draws on methods from critical legal studies and political ecology to analyze how court decisions related to water access and policy responses to climate change both shape and are shaped by notions of resource scarcity and insecurity.
Anand Datla | PhD candidate, Geography
Anand Datla is a researcher in the Department of Geography at Texas A&M University, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. His research explores nature-society relationships, particularly in rural settings. Among other things, he seeks to study how education, both formal and informal, might influence these experiences. Anand's interdisciplinary approach draws upon the fields of political ecology, human geography, and cultural anthropology to gain an understanding of contemporary discourse, policy, and practice.
With a background in industrial engineering and an MBA, Anand brings a diverse skill set to his work. He also holds an MSc from the IHE Institute of Water Education in Delft. As a Certified Information Systems Security Professional and a Lead Auditor for ISO 27001, he possesses expertise in cybersecurity and enterprise IT strategy. Over the course of his impressive career spanning more than two decades, Anand has served as a management consultant and development professional, collaborating with prominent organizations such as Ernst & Young, Deloitte, Capgemini, and the Tata Trusts.
Anand's professional engagements have taken him across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and North America. He has assisted multinational clients in addressing cyber security, enterprise solutions, process improvement, and enterprise IT strategy. In the social sector, Anand has made significant contributions in India and Africa, working on projects related to water, education, health, and livelihoods. Notably, he has developed and implemented center of excellence programs that integrate education and sports to empower marginalized rural youth in India and Africa.
Through his research, professional experience, and social sector involvement, Anand demonstrates a commitment to understanding complex societal challenges and working toward their resolution.
Tristan Krause | PhD candidate, History
Tristan Krause is a PhD student in the Graduate History Program. His broad research interests include 20th century U.S. military history, conflict archaeology, and Holocaust memory. His research examines how American efforts to identify and repatriate the remains of missing in action (MIA) military personnel in Europe after World War II shaped ongoing U.S. perceptions of Nazi persecution.
Tristan is also a practitioner of modern MIA recovery operations. During the summers, Tristan works for two Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) academic partners. To date, Tristan has deployed with the University of Wisconsin MIA Recovery and Identification Project and the Cranfield Recovery and Identification of Conflict Casualties program to archaeological digs in Italy, France, Belgium, and Germany.
Before joining Texas A&M, Tristan received his BA in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018 and worked in the Wisconsin State Assembly as a Legislative Aide.
Huyen Nguyen | PhD candidate, Educational Administration and Human Resource Development
Huyen Nguyen received her BA in Business English from Vietnam and earned her MA in International Business and Management in the UK. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Educational Administration and Human Resource Development in the School of Education and Human Development. Her dissertation research aims to explore the lived experiences of female faculty members in Vietnamese Higher Education Institutions with work-life balance (WLB). Nguyen’s research will provide a comprehensive understanding of how Vietnamese women professors navigate their work and personal life, address a longstanding gap in the human resources literature, and make a significant contribution to what is known about WLB. In terms of broader impacts, Nguyen’s research will provide valuable information to help policymakers, university leaders and managers, and department heads better optimize their resources to meet the needs and improve the quality of life of female faculty, and enhance the productivity and value of the higher education system in Vietnam.
Ewurama Okine | PhD candidate, Global Languages & Cultures
Ewurama is a current doctoral candidate in the Department of Global Languages & Cultures at Texas A&M. She received her M.A. in Translation and Interpreting Studies from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her interests lie in Afro-Hispanic sociolinguistics, pedagogy, and translation. She is passionate about the intersection of these interests in the Spanish classroom, particularly in the context of diversity and representation in instructional materials.
Olivia Thomas | PhD candidate, Anthropology
Olivia Thomas is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology’s Nautical Archaeology Program. She earned her BA in Anthropology and Underwater Archaeology from Indiana University and her MA in Maritime History from East Carolina University. Olivia’s dissertation focuses on the construction of a maritime cultural landscape for the island of St. Croix, U.S.V.I., to understand the complex nature of the cultural development of the “Island Under Seven Flags.” She has broader research interests in life onboard ships in the Age of Sail, particularly daily life and the experiences of women and children at sea. Olivia specializes in material culture studies, archival research, and underwater archaeology. The Glasscock Graduate Research Fellowship allowed her to conduct marine surveys in the waters around St. Croix to identify historic shipwreck sites. Olivia anticipates completing her doctoral degree at A&M in 2024 and plans to pursue a career in academia.