Faculty Focus-July 29, 2025
Faculty members put their knowledge into action so students and others are able to benefit from it. Recently, faculty published articles in high-impact journals and received grants for cutting-edge research.
Yesim Bayar
Associate Professor of Sociology Yesim Bayar recently published an article titled, “Constituting Minorities: International Steps and National Responses” that appeared in Minority Rights in the Centennial of the Republic, an edited volume published both in Turkish and English.
Drawing on primary data, the piece explores the League of Nations’ petition system as it dealt with non-Muslim minorities in Turkey. An earlier version of this piece was presented at a conference organized by the Hrant Dink Foundation in Istanbul in November of 2023.
Bayar holds a Ph.D. in sociology from McGill University. Her research interests include nationalism, citizenship, immigration, and state-minority relations.
Aaron Iverson
Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Aaron Iverson recently published an article with three St. Lawrence alums who are all co-authors—Lucy Nash ’23, Sofie Carlson ’23, and Tegan Anderson ’23.
The article, titled “Does a shift to a novel host plant create a defence-free space for a specialist herbivore species?” appears in the journal Functional Ecology, and highlights a fascinating communication that occurs between plants and insects. Amazingly, the authors found, goldenrod plants are able to “smell” an insect pest that attacks them. In response, the plant builds up a chemical defense that can deter the attacking insects. The paper sheds light on the evolution of plant-insect defenses.
Iverson, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in ecology and evolutionary biology, is interested in the intersection of agriculture and biodiversity, and the question of how farmers can both benefit from and protect biodiversity.
Zane Griffin Talley Cooper
Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Film Zane Griffin Talley Cooper is part of a transnational research team that was recently awarded an Insight Development Grant from Canada’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council.
The grant, totaling $368,337, is for a project titled "Land, Sea, Sky: Digital Infrastructure and Transition in Northern Landscapes and Communities," and throughout the next five years, the team will create art and research dealing with the complex challenges of Arctic digital futures, and will convene multiple conferences across the Arctic, from Norway to Alaska.
Cooper will focus primarily on producing a live-action virtual-reality short film and exhibition about South Greenland's rare-earth mining industry.
Paul Doty
Special Collections and Archives Librarian Paul Doty recently published an article in Volume 26 of the Adirondack Journal of Environmental Studies titled, “The Adirondack Artist Interviews in the St. Lawrence University Adirondack Collection.”
The article provides an overview of interviews conducted by alumnus Edward “Ned” Hallahan ’21 with Adirondack artists and writers as part of a summer research fellowship in 2019. Of note, Doty says, is Hallahan’s interview with fiction and poetry writer Russell Banks—one of the last Banks gave before he passed away. Interview transcripts are available in the Frank and Anne Piskor Reading Room in the Owen D. Young Library.
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St. Lawrence’s Faculty Focus is a regular roundup of noteworthy faculty news.
