Isom Fellows

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 About the Isom Fellows Program

The Isom Fellows Program is a two-year fellowship with the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies funded by the Office of Provost. Isom Fellows will be given $4,500 a year for two years, in support of a research project focusing on gender or sexuality. This money may be used as a summer salary, for travel, for graduate student support, or in some combination thereof.

For the 2024-2026 cohort, the Isom Center will support six fellows in research projects in gender and sexuality for the two-year period.  As part of their research, fellows may want to coordinate with the Isom Center in planning lectures and other campus events, or develop new crosslisted courses.  Isom fellow will present their research at a poster session each fall of their award, to create larger networking opportunities for interdisciplinary research.

Applications are due by the end of the day on Sunday, February 18, 2024.

Please contact Dr. Jaime Harker (jlharker@olemiss.edu) with questions.

 2023-2025 Isom Fellows

Ana Velitchkova, PH.D.

Croft Associate Professor of Sociology and International Studies

Ana Velitchkova is a Croft Associate Professor of Sociology and International Studies. Dr. Velitchkova’s research focuses on global sociology and theory. She is interested in violence, citizenship, inequality, social movements, community, and culture. Her first line of research examines transnational social movements. She shows how a transnational social movement can contribute to both social change and social continuity. Velitchkova’s violence research addresses the question: Why do persons engage in violence? She has developed two new theories of violence. In her newest line of research, Velitchkova focuses on the role of citizenship in creating global inequalities. She argues that the citizenship regime represents a global caste system.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests:  How gender matters in pathways to violent extremism

Note: Dr. Velitchkova was selected as part of the 23-25 cohort, but deferred for a year as she will be on a full-year sabbatical.

662.915.7421

avelitch@olemiss.edu

 2023-2025 Isom Fellows

Vanessa Charlot, MFA

Assistant Professor of Creative Multimedia

Vanessa Charlot is an Assistant Professor of Creative Multimedia at the School of Journalism and New Media, an award-winning photographer, speaker, filmmaker, curator and United States Army veteran. Her work focuses on the intersectionality of race, politics, culture, and sexual/gender expression to explore the collective human experience. She has worked throughout the U.S., the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. Her photographs have been commissioned by the New York Times, Gucci, Vogue, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Oprah Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Apple, New York Magazine, Buzzfeed, Artnet News, The Washington Post, and other national and international publications.

Professor Charlot has exhibited at the Frost Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota, The Women’s Museum of Costa Rica and the National Museum of Anthology in Mexico. Her work is also held in the Library of Congress Collection. Professor Charlot regularly lectures at the International Center of Photography and is the recipient of the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award for 2021. She also leads identity-based and trauma-informed safety trainings for journalists covering war and conflict for media-leading institutions. She was an Emerson Collective Fellow.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests:  Visual representation of Black women and queerness within photography

662.915.7146

vcharlot@olemiss.edu

Erika Leblanc, Ph.D., LPC,

Associate Professor of Leadership and Counselor Education

Erika L. Schmit is an Associate Professor of counseling at the University of Mississippi. Her clinical background included work with children, adolescents, and adults in community agencies, schools, and inpatient hospital settings. Her passion lies in clinical mental health counseling, specifically working with individuals at risk for suicidality. Her primary research interests include clinical mental health, suicidality prevention, intervention, and training, and sexuality in women. As an educator, Dr. Schmit loves to work with masters and doctoral students to develop critical thinking skills as well as a strong professional counselor and researcher identity. Dr. Schmit is an active member in several counseling organizations. She serves as an Associate Editor for the International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling and on the editorial board of several other journals. Dr. Schmit recently co-authored a textbook, Counseling Youth: Systemic Issues and Interventions.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests:  Sexuality development in women; religious trauma, purity culture, and shame; mental health and sexual health in women.

662.915.5376

elschmi1@olemiss.edu

Ty McNamee, PH.D.

Assistant Professor of Higher Education

Ty McNamee is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Higher Education at The University of Mississippi. Growing up as a gay, poor and working-class student on a farm/ranch in rural Wyoming greatly influenced Ty’s research interests. He uses critical, sociological, and anthropological lenses to conduct qualitative research on higher education access, success, and equity for rural students, particularly those from poor and working-class backgrounds and those who are queer, as well as college teaching and learning and faculty development at rural postsecondary institutions. Outside of his research, Ty co-founded and ran the Rural Education and Healthcare Coalition, a Teachers College, Columbia University student, faculty, and staff network focused on rural education and healthcare programming and research. He also actively serves in professional organizations, including the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) and the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Ty received his doctorate in Higher and Postsecondary Education from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2022, his Master of Arts in Higher Education and Student Affairs from the University of Connecticut in 2015, and his Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Wyoming in 2013.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests:  Interactions between queer identity and rural identity in higher education; Queer, rural students in higher education

662.915.2520

tcmcname@olemiss.edu

Sudeshna Roy, Ph.D

Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry

Sudeshna Roy is an Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy in the Department of BioMolecular Sciences at the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy. she is passionate about developing new therapeutics for the treatment of drug-resistant bacterial infections. She particularly focuses on tuberculosis, which is a major global health burden resulting in 1.5 million deaths globally every year. She and her team utilize an interdisciplinary approach to develop new antibacterials to combat the problems of antibiotic resistance that renders the clinically used antibiotics ineffective when treated for diseases caused by deadly bacteria.

Sudeshna Roy received her Bachelor of Science in chemistry from St. Stephen’s College in India and a Master of Science in organic chemistry from the University of Delhi in India. She obtained her Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her dissertation focused on synthesizing complex natural products with potential use in cancer treatment. Sudeshna expanded her focus to a more applied field of medicinal chemistry and drug discovery during her postdoctoral tenure first at the University of Kansas and then at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During her postdoctoral tenure, she worked on different disease areas such as cardiovascular, cancer, and antiviral therapeutics development.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests:  Tuberculosis treatment outcomes in women and children

662.915.2980

ROY@olemiss.edu

Asmaa Shehata, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Arabic

Asmaa Shehata is an Assistant Professor of Arabic in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Mississippi. She earned her degrees in Linguistics from Ohio University (M.A.) and the University Utah (Ph.D.). More recently, she received her M.A. in Religious Studies with specialization in Gender Studies from the University of Ottawa. Her research interests include second language phonology with particular focus on cross-language speech perception and production. Her book, Women’s Rights in Islam: A Critique of Nawal El Saadawi’s Writing, is forthcoming and explores the Egyptian feminist scholar’s arguments within an Islamic framework regarding gender-specific verses of the Qur'an.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests:  Gender and language, feminist exegesis of the Qur'an, and women’s rights and religious beliefs

662.915.7298

akshehat@olemiss.edu

Marc Watkins, MFA

Lecturer in Writing and Rhetoric

Marc Watkins is a writer, editor, teacher, and even an occasional carpenter. He's had the pleasure of seeing his fiction and nonfiction works published in over a dozen little magazines, and some of his pieces have been honored in "Best of" series like the prestigious Pushcart Prize. Since 2011, he's been sharing his passion for writing at the University of Mississippi, where he is a lecturer within the Department of Writing and Rhetoric. He has been awarded a Pushcart Prize for his writing, a 2018 Blackboard Catalyst Award for Teaching and Learning, and a 2022 WOW Fellowship. When it comes to research, Marc's interests are diverse, covering AI in education, OER, open pedagogy, creative writing, digital humanities, and grant writing.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests:  Reproduction of bias in the generative outputs of large language models and develop strategies for faculty and students to minimize such bias.

662.915.2121

mwatkins@olemiss.edu

Brooke White, MFA

Professor of Art

A native of Hampstead, NH, Brooke White lives in Oxford, Mississippi, where she is Professor of Art and Area Head of Imaging Arts in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Mississippi. The intersection of place, memory, and time dominates my artistic investigations. I employ a range of photographic approaches including experimental, documentary, portraiture, and video, to investigate topics surrounding, family and loss, identity and nature, motherhood and art. My work explores the landscape as both a private and public space, reflecting both the internal and external forces that impact our identity and connection to place. White’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, most notably at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA and the Mamia Bretesche Gallery, Marseilles & Paris, France. She has been a Senior Fulbright Scholar in Bangalore, India and her work has been published in Give and Take: Motherhood and the Creative Process, Aint Bad Magazine, Southern Cultures UNC Press, Reckonings and Reconstructions: Southern Photographs from the Do Good Collection, and the Oxford American.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests:  Landscape, nature, motherhood, creative practice

662.915.6645

brookew@olemiss.edu

 2022-2024 Isom Fellows

Lauren Bone Noble

Assistant Professor of Movement for the Actor

Lauren Bone Noble is an actor, director, playwright and teaching artist. She earned her MFA from the National Theatre Conservatory and a BFA from the University of Memphis.

Professionally Lauren has performed both on and off Broadway, regionally around the United States and abroad at Vienna's English Theatre. Television credits include Law and Order, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Guiding Light, All My Children and over 30 national network commercials.

Lauren is Assistant Professor of Movement for the Actor in the Department of Theatre and Film. Most recently for the department she developed and directed 'Near/Far', an exploration of loss and isolation through movement and Larval Mask, and' Dreaming Green' as a part of the International Climate Change Theatre Action.

Lauren has written and performed her own one person show 'FURY!' at the Phoenicia Fringe Festival, at the Denizen Theatre in New Paltz, NY and at the State University of New York at New Paltz. 'FURY!' will be a part of the 2022 Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival and, in the fall, off-Broadway at The United Solo Festival. Lauren’s play 'suff*rage' has been workshopped at Seattle Public Theatre, was a part of the 2022 International Commedia dell’Arte Festival, and is a finalist in Dragonfly Theatre’s 2022 Take Flight Festival of New Plays.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: dismantling gender stereotypes, storytelling through the female identifying lens, women in society and culture

(662) 915-5816

leboneno@olemiss.edu

LaToya faulk, M.F.A.

Lecturer of Writing and Rhetoric

LaToya Faulk is a recent fiction graduate of the University of Mississippi’s MFA program and a First-Year Writing instructor in The Department of Writing and Rhetoric.  Her work has been published in Scalawag, Southwest Review, Amherst College’s The Common, and Splinter Magazine’s Think Local series. She received a 2022 Pushcart special mention for the essay “In Search of Homeplace,” and she has a forthcoming essay soon to be published in The Global South called “Love is Wanting You Alive.” She lives with her two children in Oxford, Mississippi.  

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: 

662.915.2121

llfaulk@olemiss.edu

Ari Friedlander

Associate Professor of English

Ari Friedlander is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Mississippi. His book, _Rogue Sexuality in Early Modern English Literature: Desire, Status, Biopolitics_, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2022. For _JEMCS: Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies_, he co-edited and wrote the introduction to a special issue called “Desiring History and Historicizing Desire." Other publications on sexuality, gender, class, and disability, have appeared or are forthcoming in _SEL: Studies in English Literature: 1500-1900_, _The Oxford Handbook on Shakespeare and Embodiment_, and _Logomotives: Words that Change the Premodern World_ (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). His research has been supported by the Folger Shakespeare Institute, the Huntington Library, the Mellon Foundation, the Volkswagen Stiftung and the University of Mississippi's College of Liberal Arts.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Theories and Histories of Early Modern English Gender, Sexuality, and Reproduction

(662) 915-7674

ari@olemiss.edu

Alexandra Lindgren-Gibson

assistant professor of History

Alex Lindgren-Gibson is a historian of modern Britain and empire, with special interests in the history of the family, history of emotions, and the intersections between race, class, and gender. She received her MA in History with a concentration in Public History from Arizona State University and her PhD in History from Northwestern University (2016). Her book, Working-Class Raj: Colonialism and the Making of Class in British India, reframes British working-class history as part of global history, asking what happened to working-class men and women when they left Britain and travelled to India, where their social worlds were upended by the disruptive addition of race to seemingly unshakeable British social hierarchies. Since coming to the University of Mississippi, she has taught courses in British Empire, European gender history, public history, and the global history of food.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: As an Isom Fellow, Alex will be starting work on a new project that thinks through histories of friendship in empire through the lens of gender and sexuality studies.

(662) 915-7148

aslindgr@olemiss.edu

Susan Pedigo

Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Susan is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. After years with a funded, active research program as a biophysical chemist, she has turned her attention to studying the gendered aspects of the work of tenure-track faculty in academia. She is happy to be affiliated with the remarkable diverse and skilled scholars affiliated with the Isom Center.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Academic citizenship, belonging, merit and reward in academia

(662) 915-5328

spedigo@olemiss.edu

D'Andre Walker

Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Legal Studies

Dr. D’Andre Walker is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Legal Studies and a research affiliate with Mississippi’s Crime and Justice Research Unit (CJRU). He received his Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Arizona State University. Prior to Ole Miss, Dr. Walker served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Iowa. His primary research and teaching interests includes criminology, gender and crime, juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice, and race and crime. His work has appeared in various outlets, such as Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and the Journal of Criminal Justice.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Reproductive Health (i.e., Teenage Pregnancy) and Deviant Behavior

(662) 915-7902

dlwalke1@olemiss.edu

EmeritI Isom Fellows

 2021-2023 Isom Fellows

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Owen james hyman, Ph.d.

Instructional Assistant Professor of African American Studies

Owen James Hyman is a historian of race, science, and the environment and an Instructional Assistant Professor in the African American Studies Department at the University of Mississippi. His first book project, Cut-Over Color Lines: Black Forests in the Jim Crow South, argues the South's culture of Jim Crow segregation, disfranchisement, and violence evolved through multiple reorganizations of the region's forests. As an Isom Fellow, his research will examine how land ownership helped African American women resist patterns of violence rooted in sexual assault, white supremacy, and class conflict in the face of radical environmental change.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Slavery, segregation, and sexual violence; African American women's land ownership; African American women in business

662.915.2520

ojhyman@olemiss.edu

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Diane Marting, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Modern Languages

Diane E. Marting is Professor of Spanish at The University of Mississippi where she has been teaching since 2002, after holding positions at UCLA, Columbia University, and other research institutions. She is the Graduate Program Coordinator for French, German, and Spanish. Prof. Marting earned her degrees in Comparative Studies from Ohio State (B.A. with Honors) and in Comparative Literature from Rutgers University (M.A., Ph. D.). She primarily teaches courses in literature, film, and culture from Spanish America, but also enjoys teaching Spanish language, literature in English, and gender studies. In 2022 she is working on minority recruitment for the M. A. degree in Modern Languages and Latin American literature about prostitution.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Her research interests include Spanish American and Brazilian literature, film, and culture by women writers and directors or about women’s lives, feminist literary criticism, and European-Latin American feminist philosophies..

662.915.2520

martingdiane@gmail.com

Joseph wellman, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Psychology

Dr. Joseph Wellman joined the University of Mississippi’s Psychology Department as an Assistant Professor in the Fall of 2019. He received his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Maine and completed a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship in Culture, Emotion, and Race at Wesleyan University. Prior to joining the faculty at UM, he was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at California State University, San Bernardino where he received an NSF ADVANCE grant to address issues of diversity in promotion, tenure, and hiring. His work focuses on how being the target of stigma affects behaviors, well-being, and performance. Much of this work explores factors that may influence an individual’s response to discrimination, bias, and intergroup interactions (e.g., system-legitimizing beliefs, group identification, zero-sum beliefs, perceived sigma, etc.). His research has been published in leading social psychology journals such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and Psychology of Men and Masculinities.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Group Identification, Sexism, Sexual Prejudice, Ingroup Discrimination, Collective Action, LGBT Bias, Masculinity Threat.

662.915.5037

wellman@olemiss.edu

 2020-2022 Isom Fellows

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Marie Barnard, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Pharmacy Administration and Research Associate Professor in the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences

Dr. Barnard earned a masters degree in epidemiology from the University of Tennessee and a Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi conducting research on intimate partner violence and community pharmacy practice. Her research explores the intersection of sex and gender with public health issues.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Sex and gender-based medicine, intimate partner violence and health outcomes, women and public health

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662.915.1946

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mbarnard@olemiss.edu

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Deanna Kreisel, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of English

Before coming to the University of Mississippi, Deanna Kreisel taught at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver for 13 years. She works on feminist theory, political economy, environmental criticism, and the 19th-century British novel. Her first book, Economic Woman: Demand, Gender, and Narrative Closure in Eliot and Hardy was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2012. She is currently working on a book entitled Sustainability and Utopian Form in Victorian Literature and Culture 1840-1905. More information about her scholarship and publications is available on her website: www.deannakreisel.com.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Feminist and queer theory, eco-feminist theory

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662.915.7439

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dkk@olemiss.edu

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Jennie Lightweis-Goff, Ph.D.

Instructor of English

Jennie Lightweis-Goff earned a Ph.D. in English, as well as Graduate Certificates in Gender Studies and Africana Studies, from the University of Rochester. Since 2016, she has been an Instructor of English on UM's branch campuses, where she teaches film studies, feminist theory, southern studies, and the full historical scope of American Literature. Her dissertation won the Susan B. Anthony Award for the Best Dissertation in Gender and Women's Studies and the SUNY Press Dissertation / First Book Prize in African-American Studies in 2010. It was published as Blood at the Root: Lynching as American Cultural Nucleus by the SUNY Press in 2011. Presently, she is at work on a monograph called Captive Cities: Urban Slavery in Four Movements. Essays from this project have appeared in American Literature and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. A partisan of New Orleans literature and culture, Lightweis-Goff has published on the city in the journals Mississippi Quarterly, Southern Quarterly, minnesota review, and the edited collections Small Screen Souths and Southern Comforts.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Incarcerated women, spectacles of gender and punishment, prison pedagogy, public humanities, prisons as "publics," the public/private binary.

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662.915.7439

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jlg@olemiss.edu

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Eva Payne, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of History

Eva Payne is a historian of the 19th- and 20th-century U.S. with a focus on women, gender, and sexuality and the U.S. in transnational perspective. She is an Assistant Professor in the Arch Dalrymple III Department of History at the University of Mississippi. Payne’s current book project asks how and why many American reformers came to see sexual issues – including prostitution, the legal age of consent, venereal disease, and sex trafficking – as central international humanitarian and political problems in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: History of sexual commerce and labor; the relationship between gender, sexuality and the state

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662.915.7148

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ebpayne@olemiss.edu

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Don Unger, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Writing & Rhetoric

Don Unger’s research addresses the relationships among embodied experience, technological innovation, and grassroots activism. Currently, he is working with the Marks Project, located in Quitman County, on a community-centered digital literacy program. Additionally, he is conducting historical research about the Poor People’s Corporation, a network of Black worker-owned and -operated cooperatives in Mississippi from the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s. He serves as the Co-Managing Editor of Spark: A Journal of Activism in Writing, Rhetoric & Literacy Studies and as the Social-Media Editor for Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society. His scholarship has appeared in Computers & Composition, Constellations: A Cultural Rhetorics Publishing Space, and Teacher-Scholar-Activist, as well as in the edited collection Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet. He teaches courses in community writing, writing for digital media, and feminist pedagogy.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: embodiment, feminist and womanist pedagogies, activism, community engagement

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662.915.2121

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dunger@olemiss.edu

 2019-2021 Isom Fellows

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Francis D. Boateng, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Legal Studies

Dr. Francis D. Boateng is an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology in the Department of Legal Studies, University of Mississippi and a research fellow for Africa Institute for Crime, Policy & Governance Research. He received his MA and PhD in criminal justice and criminology from Washington State University, and is currently working on several projects testing the organizational justice and support theories in a comparative context. He is also developing a book manuscript (under contract with Routledge) that looks at U.S. immigration policy and National Security. Dr. Boateng’s main research interests include comparative criminal justice, comparative policing, Police legitimacy, international security, victimology, quantitative research, crime, law and justice. In addition to presenting papers at professional conferences such as American Society of Criminology (ASC), Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS), and Western Association of Criminal Justice (WACJ), he has published extensively. His recent publications have appeared in a number of well-respected journals, including Crime & Delinquency, Prison Journal, Policing & Society, Policing: An international Journal, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, International Studies Criminal Research Justice Review, Journal of the Institute of Justice and International 

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Female Police Criminality: Nature and Extent of Crimes Committed by Female Police Officers

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662.915.7902

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fboateng@olemiss.edu

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Deidra Jackson, Ph.D.

Visiting Instructor of Writing

Deidra Faye Jackson, who earned a Ph.D. in Higher Education from the University of Mississippi, teaches first-year writing and graduate higher education courses. She researches faculty perceptions of scholarly productivity, writing groups as faculty development, and faculty persistence within "publish or perish" R1 universities. She is a Visiting Instructor of Writing and holds a master's and bachelor's degree in journalism. A former newspaper editor and reporter in North Carolina and Mississippi, she currently is a contributing writer for Inside Higher Ed. She also has presented research at the annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and (forthcoming) the Association of Rhetoric and Writing Studies. She has co-authored and authored articles in the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship and the Journal of Contemporary Research in Education, respectively. Daily, she is motivated to persevere by her Gen Z son, Jackson, with whom she lives in Oxford, Miss.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Gender and race influences in publishing persistence, as well as faculty relationships and collegiality as they relate to scholarly productivity.

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662.915.2121

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djackson@olemiss.edu

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Tess Lefmann, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Social Work

Tess Lefmann received her Ph.D. in Social Work from the University of Tennessee. Her research agenda focuses on maternal and child health disparities, beginning with inequalities in the prenatal environment that lead to discrepancies in postpartum health promotion behaviors. Particularly, on the structural and cultural barriers that contribute to the glaring racial and economic disparities in breastfeeding behavior.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Intersectionality of birth, breastfeeding, and motherhood

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662.915.7336

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tlefmann@olemiss.edu

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Gregory J. Love, Ph.D.

Professor of Political Science

Gregory J. Love is Associate Professor of Political Science and Affiliated Researcher of the Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University. He is also co-director of the Executive Approval Project and the Southeast Latin American Behavioral Workshop. He holds a Ph.D. and B.A. from the University of California, Davis. Dr. Love’s work focuses on the intersection of mass political behavior and elite identities, actions, and institutions, particularly in Latin America. His recent publications and ongoing projects look at the role of leader gender and democratic accountability in the developed and developing world. Work from this project and others appear in numerous academic journals, books, and popular press outlets. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Center for the Study of Conflict and Social Cohesion (Chile), and the Latin American Studies Association. Dr. Love’s teaching interests align with his research endeavors. Recent courses have examined the politics of Latin America and the role of mass movements and identities in shaping individual behavior.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: The role of gender in political leadership and the interesection of gender and racial/ethnic identity in public opinion from a comparative perspective.

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662.915.7401

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gjlove@olemiss.edu

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Amy McDowell, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Sociology

Amy McDowell studies and teaches the intersection of religion, gender, sexuality, and popular culture. Her previous work focused on how young Christian men use punk rock music to construct religious space in secular settings and on how Muslim youth use punk to resist anti-Muslim racism. She published this research in Gender & SocietySociology of ReligionQualitative Sociology, and Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. McDowell’s current research takes a qualitative approach to understanding the relationship between American evangelical church culture and gender politics in the Deep South.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Sociology of gender, sexuality, and religion, particularly religious conservatism.

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662.915.1235

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mcdowell@olemiss.edu

 2018-20 Isom Fellows

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Susan H. Allen, Ph.D.

Professor of Political Science

I am a professor of political science at the University of Mississippi. I received my Ph.D. in political science at Emory University and bachelor's degree from Guilford College. In my research, I explore economic sanctions, air power, and the consequences of conflict. Other work contributes to the scholarship on international institutions (particularly the United Nations), interactions between national governments and opposition groups, the human consequences of military and economic conflict.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Women and armed conflict

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662.915.7401

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shallen@olemiss.edu

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Alysia Burton Steele, MA

Associate Professor of Journalism

Alysia Burton Steele is a multimedia journalist and author of the book “Delta Jewels: In Search of My Grandmother’s Wisdom,” a finalist in the 2015 Jessie Redmon Fauset Book Awards for nonfiction.

The book has been featured in The New York Times, NBC.com, USA Today, Chicago Sun-Times, National Public Radio, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Essence, theroot.com (owned by The Washington Post), Free Lance-Star,  The Clarion-Ledger and Southern Living. NYT bestselling author Bishop T.D. Jake’s featured her story in his Docu-Series.

She received her bachelor of arts degree in journalism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and her master’s degree in photography from Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication.

Steele has worked as a staff photographer/multimedia producer at The Columbus Dispatch, a picture editor at The Dallas Morning News and deputy director of photography/picture editor at The Atlanta-Journal Constitution.

Steele spent five weeks documenting life in South Africa, Uganda and the Ivory Coast, where her images were featured in Habitat for Humanity’s 25th anniversary coffee table book. While working as a photographer at The Columbus Dispatch, she won the 2004 James Gordon Understanding Award for photographic excellence for her month-long assignment inside the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya.

In 2006, she was part of the photo team that won the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News for their Hurricane Katrina coverage where she served as a picture editor. For three consecutive years, she did the picture editing and layout/design for the Arnold Schwarzenegger Sports Classic coffee table book.

She also did picture editing for the National Urban League and designed their 100th commemorative poem booklet written by Maya Angelou. She’s won numerous awards for her photography and picture editing.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Women’s oral histories

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662.915.2096

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alysia@olemiss.edu

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Amanda Winburn, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Leadership and Counselor Education

Amanda Winburn, Ph.D., SB-RPT, NCSC, NCC is currently serving as an Assistant Professor within the Department of Leadership and Counselor Education. Dr. Winburn has over a decade of experience working with children in various settings. Dr. Winburn is a licensed educator, counselor, and administrator. Over the last 8 years, she has been actively involved in play therapy at the University of Mississippi both at the clinical setting as well as actively conducting research within the field. Other research interest include school counseling, wellness, and advocacy.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Educators and Advocacy

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662.915.8823

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amwinbur@olemiss.edu

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Kenya Wolff, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education

Dr. Kenya Wolff grew up in East Africa as the daughter of an anthropologist and a teacher/missionary. She credits this unique upbringing for exposing her to academia and the transformative power of education and service. Dr. Wolff, joined Ole Miss as an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education in 2016. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Secondary Education from Chaminade University (Honolulu), a Master’s Degree in Early Childhood Education from Texas Woman's University and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of North Texas. Dr. Wolff teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in early childhood education.Dr. Wolff ‘s experience as a classroom teacher and administrator allows her to bring real-world knowledge to the students she teaches at Ole Miss. Dr. Wolff’s research utilizes critical qualitative methodologies and focuses on social justice across various social contexts of childhood. For example, her dissertation research examined corporate marketing as central curriculum for today’s globalized child. She has written several subsequent articles on marketing to young children and the impact materialism has on children within today’s globalized world. She currently has several studies underway, including one on the use of yoga in preschool settings, a study on teacher perceptions of gender and sexuality in early childhood and an investigation on administrative decisions to recommend alternative schools for young children.In addition to research, Dr. Wolff currently holds a position on the editorial board for the Southern Early Childhood Association Journal, Dimensions and serves as an associate editor for the journal, International Critical Childhood Studies. She is also mother to Grace (16) and Ethan (12) who inspire her daily to strive for a more just and equitable world for children everywhere.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Gender in Education, Gender in Marketing

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662.915.5037

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kewolff@olemiss.edu

Pria Wood, Ph.D.

Instructional Assistant Professor of Theatre and Film

Pria is theatre scholar, teacher, director, and sound designer. As a scholar, she is deeply invested in understanding how the stories people tell themselves—through drama, film, performance, and history—shape human behavior and thought. Her research focuses on cross-cultural avant-garde, cognitive science, popular culture, and gender within the US, Europe, and Japan during the 20th and 21st centuries. In addition to theatre, she also does occasional web and graphic design, dramatic and fiction writing, and composes electronic/ambient music. Samples of her work can be found at petercwood.com. 

Pria's central focus on GWS issues is on how gender is represented in popular culture and she has published on gender representation in film (Aliens), and theatre (Into the Woods). She is also working to do more to bring attention to women avant-garde and experimental performance artists by teaching on the subject in the fall of 2018 and has begun researching a number of issues related to polyamory/consensual non-monogamy and theatre/performance.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Gender is representation in popular culture, women's avant-garde

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662.915.5816

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pcwood@olemiss.edu

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Carrie Veronica Smith, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Psychology

Carrie Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Mississippi.  She is also the inaugural Isom Center Fellow.  She holds a masters degree in Experimental Psychology from the College of William & Mary and a doctoral degree in Social Psychology from the University of Houston.  Her research falls into three main areas: (a) The role of the self and motivation in people’s relationships (friendships, romantic and sexual relationships, families, professional relationships), especially through the lens of Self-Determination Theory, (b) Situational and individual determinants of perceptions of daily experiences, such as social interactions and sexual interactions, and (c) The influence of sex, gender, and ambivalent sexism on social perception, social interaction, and personal and professional well-being.  She has presented her work at regional, national, and international conferences and has over 30 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters to her credit.  In addition to her academic endeavors, her campus service has included serving as the chair of the Diversity Committee in the Department of Psychology, volunteering on advisory boards and work groups associated with Greek Life, and working on the Non-Tenure Track Task Force on issues of shared governance.

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: Personal Relationships and Sexuality

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662.915.7671

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csmith4@olemiss.edu