International Research
The John Martinson Honors College values international perspectives in scholarship. This can be seen in our interdisciplinary coursework, but also in the original research of our faculty, the scholarly projects of our students, and partnerships across units on campus.
Faculty
Dr. Megha Anwer
Assistant Clincal Professor & Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Dr. Anwer is passionate about literature, photography, and cinema, and her research invariably shuttles between these different media texts. Her areas of specialization include urban theory, cultures of violence, gender and sexuality studies, visual studies, Victorian literature and photography, contemporary postcolonial literature, film studies and graphic novels. At the moment, she is working on a project commemorating the Abu Ghraib torture photographs, and their impact on a wider visual economy of the twenty-first century.
Dr. Liz Brite
Associate Clinical Professor & Director of Scholarly Project Grants
Dr. Brite is an archaeologist and educator with nearly a decade of experience in university honors education. As a scholar, she has worked on and directed archaeological research expeditions in many parts of the world, including her core area of expertise in Uzbekistan, as well as various projects in India, Peru, California, and the American Southwest. Her principle research questions focus on processes of agricultural innovation and change in prehistory; she is especially interested in how these processes unfolded in the contexts of pre-modern globalization, and in the evolving political ecologies of ancient states and empires in Central Asia.
Dr. Natasha Duncan
Associate Dean for International Education and Affairs
Dr. Duncan is a political scientist by training and teaches courses that examine the international relations among states and non-state actors. She is particularly interested in international migration, which is the focus of her research and inspires the types of courses she offers. Dr. Duncan herself has taken students to Guyana, Colombia, India, and the U.S.-Mexico border. She is well-published and has an active research agenda, regularly involving undergraduate students in the research process on various projects.
Dr. Katie Jarriel
Clinical Assistant Professor & Director of the Honors Mentor Program
Dr. Jarriel’s research combines archaeology and computer modeling to explore how people living in the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age created communities based on a shared sense of place. While her main area of interest is Greece, she has also done archaeological fieldwork in Spain, Israel, and Cyprus. She teaches courses on classical mythology and its modern reception, human materiality, and human-environment interaction.
Dr. Dwaine Jengelley
Clinical Assistant Professor & Director of the Visiting Scholar Program
Dr. Jengelley’s research focuses on communication in matters of international security. Currently, he examines the prominence of counterterrorism stories in the mainstream print media and the tone of news coverage. In this area, he explores if the negativity in terrorism news coverage is influenced by the economic fortunes of media organizations. He also is doing research on the portrayals of the Black Lives Matter movement in editorial cartoons. He examines how cartoonists have framed the issue of racism within the BLM moment and the ways in which this might be different from the period preceding it. His teaching interests include international terrorism, international political economy, and sports and politics.
Dr. Nathan Swanson
Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow
Dr. Swanson is a political and cultural geographer whose research is focused in three areas: (1) geopolitics of everyday life, (2) public space and power, and (3) critical cartography and counter-mapping (as a member of the Counter-Cartographies Collective). Dr. Swanson completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in December 2016, following previous studies in law (J.D., Drake University) and political science (B.A. & M.A., Iowa State University). In the course of these programs, he studied abroad in Kenya, Germany, Antarctica, Australia, Syria, Egypt, and Morocco. Dr. Swanson has previously conducted research in the Middle East toward his doctoral dissertation, and his current research focuses on the geographies of Middle Eastern migrant communities in Scandinavia.
Dr. Anish Vanaik
Visiting Associate Professor
Anish Vanaik’s primary field of research is urban history. His recent book Possessing the City studies the history of property relations in colonial Delhi. He’s currently extending that work and exploring business histories of the early post-colonial period. His current book project is about how political cartoons about racism were shaped by the Black Lives Matter movement. Two other areas of particular interest include the climate crisis and Marxism (both theoretical questions and the history of Left wing movements).
