Faculty Focus-February 13, 2023
St. Lawrence faculty put their knowledge into action so students and others are able to benefit from it. Recently, faculty were awarded research grants, were featured in research articles and on the radio, published papers and research articles and much more.
Atal Ahmadzai
Visiting Assistant Professor of International Relations Atal Ahmadzai has published an article titled “The ICC Should Prosecute Taliban Leaders” on Foreign Policy News. In his article, Ahmadzai discusses the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and shares that it has been implicated in serious crimes against humanity and violations of international humanitarian law. Ahmadzai also recently authored a peer-reviewed book chapter titled "Exploring the Sub-state–Supra-state Nexus in Transboundary Water Politics." In this piece, he analyzed the limitations of International Relations (IR) theory in theorizing transboundary water governance. Through a case study of the Pakistan-World Bank water governance nexus, Ahmadzai argued the sub-state and supra-state nexus have a hegemonic influence on transboundary water politics, as opposed to traditional statist and unitary explanations of the IR theory. The chapter is available in Springer's edited volume "Theorizing Transboundary Waters in International Relations"
Ahmadzai’s research focuses on the thematic intersection of environment-conflict-development. His publications are in the areas of human development, global governance, and terrorism. He holds regional expertise in South, Central, and Western Asia.
Howard Eissenstat
Associate Professor of History Howard Eissenstat wrote a couple of short articles for The Middle East Institute’s (MEI) Weekly Briefing. His first piece titled “A Year After Devastating Earthquakes, Turkey’s Recovery Lags, but Erdoğan Suffers Few Political Costs” addresses the 2023 earthquake in Turkey and Syria in remembrance on the first anniversary of the date. Eissenstat’s second article in the MEI Weekly Briefing is titled “Local Elections Will Make or Break Turkish Opposition, Dictate Erdoğan’s Ability to Shape His Legacy,” which consists of his update on Turkey's upcoming municipal elections.
Eissenstat was also featured on Coda Story in an article titled “In Istanbul, the Last Uyghur Bookshops Struggle to Survive.” Eissenstat suggests that Turkey's collaboration with repressive regimes like China stems from a transactional approach to international relations, with little regard for the rule of law. This collaboration includes actions such as extraditing individuals sought by China and suppressing dissent, which poses a threat to Uyghur refugees in Turkey. The piece also highlights the precarious situation of Uyghur bookshops in Istanbul, emphasizing their importance in preserving Uyghur culture and the challenges they face due to government raids and economic pressures.
Wendi A Haugh
Associate Professor of Anthropology Wendi A Haugh was recently interviewed and featured in a radio story published through "Northern Public Radio" (NPR) and published by The World. The story titled “Birds are Everywhere!’ Women Bird Guides in Uganda Set a Global Example,” features Haugh and her expertise as a cultural anthropologist doing research on the working lives of professional bird guides in East Africa. This article focuses on a group of women birders in Entebbe, Uganda, who are passionate about their avian pursuits, spotting over 400 species in the town's botanical garden. Trained by Uganda Women Birders, they aim to become professional guides, overcoming cultural taboos and personal challenges to pursue their love for birds, with aspirations to excel in their field despite societal barriers.
Mark Holland
Assistant Professor of Geology Mark Holland recently published a paper in the journal Terra Nova entitled, "Source-to-sink Tandem Geochronology Reveals Tectonic Influences on the Cambrian Transcontinental Arch of Laurentia." Along with his collaborators from Boise State University and the University of New Mexico, Holland investigated the geologic significance of an enigmatic rock in the Grand Canyon called the Sixty-Mile Formation.
Holland was also recently awarded a grant through the "Advancing Geochronology Science, Space, and Systems Diversity in Geochronology (AGeS₃-DiG)" program. Geochronology is the science of placing absolute age constraints on geologic processes with radiogenic isotope geochemistry; an example of this is dating rocks.
The AGeS₃-DiG program is a National Science Foundation-sponsored grant program aimed to engage, train, and educate students at any level who have not historically had equal access to geochronology data and training, and to generate and test innovative ideas to expand geochronology access for those minoritized in the Earth sciences.
Holland’s project, entitled "Discerning Timescales of Anorthosite Petrogenesis in the Adirondack Highlands, NY with Inclusive Field and Geochronologic Practices," will support two St. Lawrence students to study the origins of an enigmatic rock called anorthosite, which underlies an area of approximately 3,000 square kilometers of the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks. Students will conduct high-precision U-Pb (uranium-lead) dating of tiny crystals within anorthosite sampled from across the High Peaks region to determine how long it took this massive body of anorthosite to form. Determining how long it took to form will inform how it formed.
Grace C Huang
Professor of Government Grace Huang has completed her tenure as a US Fulbright Senior Scholar in Taiwan which began in August 2023 and just recently concluded in January 2024. Huang is writing a book about working mothers in Taiwan, the US, and Spain and their decisions to create work-family balance given their employment situation, the government's support, and family circumstances. While in Taiwan, she conducted interviews with working mothers and with policy experts. Huang introduces her project and her preliminary findings in Strait Up, a podcast that focuses on global affairs, East Asia, and particularly, Taiwan. She is actively writing a blog called Field Notes of a Working Mother to record her research reflections.
Huang was recently featured in Taipei Times News for her article Titled “Can Lai Solve the Low Birthrate?” Her article discusses Taiwan facing a significant challenge with one of the lowest fertility rates globally, potentially leading to a shrinking workforce and an aging population. Huang shares information on government policies aimed at supporting working mothers, including subsidies for fertility treatments, paid leave, and childcare, which are being expanded. But Huang states that addressing broader issues like long work hours, low pay, and housing costs, along with shifting societal norms around gender roles, may be crucial in boosting birth rates.
Mert Kartal
Associate Professor of Government Mert Kartal has been featured in the News Week article “Will Ukraine War End in 2024? Experts Weigh In.” In the article, Kartal shares his beliefs that “Biden could try to bolster military support for Ukraine in spring 2024, leveraging a Ukrainian victory as part of his presidential campaign.” Kartal shares "At the very least, he would take the necessary steps to prevent Ukraine's defeat before the first week of November 2024. However, persuading the members of the Republican Party, increasingly doubtful about the likelihood of Putin's defeat, will pose a significant challenge."
Kartal teaches several courses on international relations, including Introduction to International Relations, International Organizations, and European Union Politics, as well as a research seminar on political corruption. His research focuses on the impact of international organizations on democratic governance. He also serves as the on-campus coordinator for Diplomacy Lab, a formal partnership between St. Lawrence and the U.S. Department of State.
Sahar Milani
Associate Professor of Economics Sahar Milani offers her expertise to consumers in an article published by MoneyGeek titled “Best 0% APR Credit Cards in 2024.” Milani shares her expert commentary about 0% APR credit cards and expounded on the benefits of a 0% APR offer on balance transfers. She also shares information on how making purchases affects credit scores.
Milani is an innovation economist with research interests that include environmental economics, macroeconomics, and the financing of innovation. At St. Lawrence, she has taught courses on personal finance, environmental economics, natural resource economics, the economics of innovation, and macroeconomics. She is actively directing St. Lawrence’s off-campus program in New York City during the 2023-2024 academic year.
Dave Murphy
Professor of Environmental Studies David Murphy has been highlighted as being among the top 2% of top-cited scientists classified into various scientific fields. This acknowledgment is prepared by researchers from Stanford University in collaboration with Elsevier and updated annually. This dataset analyzes and ranks researchers from around the world, and a selection is created that is based on the top 100,000 scientists by c-score (with and without self-citations) or a percentile rank of 2% or above in the sub-field. Murphy is among the scientists recognized in the field of energy studies.
Murphy’s research focuses on the intersection of energy, economics, and the environment. As an interdisciplinary scientist, his research poses broad questions that bridge disciplines. Some of Murphy’s most recent work analyzes the impact that the current renewable energy policies in New York State may have on greenhouse gas emissions and the energy return on investment of the electrical grid system.
Murphy was recently been featured on an episode of The Energy Transition Show with Chris Nelder where he discusses if renewable energy sources generate enough energy ‘profit’ to make them worth continued investment, as well as being a part of a group of authors in the manuscript “Energy & Environmental Science” published by the Royal Society of Chemistry where he touches on the topic of merging net energy research in the IPCC assessments.
Mindy Pitre
Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology Mindy Pitre is part of a team that discovered one of the world’s earliest cases of rheumatoid arthritis in ancient Egypt. Her paper “A case of rheumatoid arthritis in a Nubian woman from the site of Sheikh Mohamed, near Aswan, Egypt" was recently published in the International Journal of Paleopathology. The discovery has been featured in Live Science News.
Her work has also been featured by Archaeology News, a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America, and on Blogspot.
Pitre and her team’s discovery of the incomplete skeletal remains of a woman from 1800-1500 B.C. with rheumatoid arthritis was found in Aswan. Identified by erosive lesions, the condition affected her joints, making daily activities difficult. This discovery challenges previous beliefs about the existence of rheumatoid arthritis in ancient Egypt.
Pitre is a bioarcheologist whose research focuses on the study of human skeletal remains from archaeological sites and the complex relationship between biology and culture in the past. In particular, she is interested in understanding the presence and experience of disease and illness in antiquity. She has excavated and studied human skeletons in Canada, the United Kingdom, Egypt, the Sudan, and Syria.
Jon Rosales
Professor of Environmental Studies Jon Rosales was recently featured in an article by Adirondack Explorer titled “Is the Future of Outdoor Skating on Thin Ice?” In this article, Rosales shares that under the current emissions rate, there would be no outdoor ice thick enough for hockey players to achieve an “expert” level or 10,000 hours of play before age 18.
Rosales's research is focused on the impacts of climate change on native peoples in the Arctic. His expertise and scholarly focus are on developing scientific field methods that measure traditional ecological knowledge of Arctic climate change. Threaded through his work is a call to align human institutions within natural limits by challenging “monocultures of the mind,” or fossilized ways of thinking, that overwhelm the planet.
Karl Schonberg
Interim Vice President & Dean of Students Karl Schonberg has recently been published in Inside Higher Ed. His article "Lessons on Moral Clarity from the Anti-Semitism Hearings" discusses recent congressional hearings, and the conversations university presidents have struggled with, revealing a tension between their roles as administrators and moral leaders. Through this article, we see the challenge of balancing legal concerns with moral clarity in addressing hate speech on college campuses, particularly amidst societal polarization. Schonberg shares that to navigate this, universities need clear policies against dehumanizing speech while fostering open discourse through proactive community discussions and well-defined institutional values.
Catherine Tedford
Director of The Richard F. Brush Art Gallery Catherine Tedford recently had her work featured in the book Unframing the Visual: Visual Literacy Pedagogy in Academic Libraries and Information Spaces. The book describes visual literacy as “an interconnected set of practices, habits, and values for participating in visual culture that can be developed through critical, ethical, reflective, and creative engagement with visual media.”
Tedford’s chapter, “Street Stickers as Subversive Visual Discourse,” is included in the section of the book titled “Pursuing Social Justice through Visual Practice.” Here she provides a brief history of street stickers for those unfamiliar with the genre and describes how a university art gallery educator uses a collection of sociopolitical street stickers and a related Street Art Graphics digital archive to teach aspects of visual literacy through the lens of social justice issues.
Elisa Van Kirk
Visiting Assistant Director of the Education Department Elisa Van Kirk was recently published by Times Union in an Op-Ed titled “This Year Saw Progress in Women’s College Sports, but There's Still a Long Way to Go.” Van Kirk shares that despite previous skepticism, recent events in 2023 have demonstrated the growing popularity and success of women's college sports. The article shares that record-breaking attendance at events like the Nebraska volleyball game and Iowa women's basketball game, along with increased television coverage and corporate sponsorship, signify a significant shift in recognition and investment in women's athletics. Van Kirk expresses that the need for more female coaches remains a crucial area for improvement in ensuring the continued growth and success of women's college sports.
Van Kirk’s research primarily focuses on collegiate athletics as well as sports and gender. She is actively teaching two graduate courses titled Leadership Theory Athletic & Physical Education, and Gender & Sport.
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