CLA provides multiple avenues of support for graduate student research through conference travel funding and research awards. The graduate school also provides additional funding opportunities.

Research Opportunities

Research Awards for Advanced Doctoral Students (RAADS)

RAADS are intended to support advanced doctoral students’ research including research-related expenses, travel, foreign language study, technologies and data. Check in with your department graduate director for more information on eligibility.

Student Research Highlights

The College of Liberal Arts’ graduate students produce cutting-edge academic work. Below, you can read about the various research highlights in some of our departments from our current students.

Anthropology

Grace Fay Cooper

English

Matthew Soderblom

Description of research: I currently research concepts of the American frontier and various forms of madness depicted in its literature. I am very interested in the relationship between land, industrialization and madness. I am in the midst of writing my dissertation prospectus. This research includes a diverse body of European American and Indigenous authors. These authors include: Willa Cather, Hamlin Garland, O.E. Rølvaag, Charles Eastman, Zitkalá-Šá, Alexander Posey, Sara Winnemucca, etc.

Papers/publications related to research: I recently published a review of Miranda Green-Barteet and Anne K. Phillips' Reconsidering Laura Ingalls: Little House and Beyond.
Social media mentions about research: Here is a citation and link to my publication: Soderblom, Matthew. Review of Reconsidering Laura Ingalls Wilder: Little House and Beyond ed. by Miranda A. Green-Barteet and Anne K. Phillips. South Central Review, vol. 38 no. 1, 2021, p. 105-107. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/scr.2021.0007.

Faculty Advisor: Miles Orvell

Email: tuh37388@temple.edu

Micah Savaglio

Description of research: Micah Savaglio is an English doctoral candidate at Temple University. His research interests include composition and rhetoric, disability studies, multimodality, and creative writing. His recent opinion piece published on the National Council of Teachers of English blog pulls from his doctoral research and addresses issues of access at Temple. This research was supported in part by Temple University’s Disability Resources and Services and First-year Writing Program.
Papers/publications related to research:
- Micah Savaglio, “What COVID-19 Has Taught Us About Access to Equitable Education.” National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Blog. February 10, 2021: ncte.org/blog/2021/02/covid-19-taught-us-access-equitable-education
- Micah Savaglio, Addressing Mental Disability in the Postsecondary Classroom via Faculty Development Partnership. Written with Aaron Spector. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability 34 (Spring 2021): 91-99.
Awards or grants received: Graduate school 2021 summer grant award
Social media mentions about research: ncte.org/blog/2021/02/covid-19-taught-us-access-equitable-education

Faculty Advisor: Shannon Walters

Email: tuf75342@temple.edu

History

Amanda Summers

Peter Sicher

Description of research: An examination of the 1862 escape of Robert Smalls, the reactions he inspired, and the manner in which he leveraged his own story in the larger political context of debates concerning emancipation and Union war aims.
Conference presentations or highlights: Presented a paper entitled 'A Grateful Nation:' Robert Smalls and Narratives of Emancipation in 1862 at the 26th annual Barnes Conference.
Awards or grants received: My paper at the Barnes Conference was awarded Best Paper, U.S. History.

Faculty Advisor: Gregory Urwin

Email: tun52705@temple.edu

Philosophy

Caleb Zimmerman

Political Science

Maura Shenker

Conference presentations or highlights: I was a speaker at the Clinton Foundation Inclusive Economic Recovery program last week. Link to the video of the panel is below.
- Session Speakers: Danielle Holly, CEO, Common Impact; Moderator Javier Soto, director, gener8tor; Moderator Carolyn Rodz, co-founder, Hello Alice; Fay Horwitt, president and CEO, Forward Cities; Natalie Cofield, assistant administrator for the Office of Women’s Business Ownership, Small Business Administration; Maura Shenker, director, Temple University’s Small Business Development Center
- Session Description: Although small businesses continue to struggle in today's economic downtown, the rise of pandemic entrepreneurs—individuals who are innovating during the COVID-19 pandemic to create new opportunities of self-employment—offers hope for a new class of leaders who can fuel America's economic recovery while supporting historically underserved communities.
- While fostering the development of these entrepreneurs and backing small business growth will create more jobs, this requires investment and support for them to grow and thrive. In this session, panelists will discuss the impetus and future opportunities for people turning to self-employment and what technical assistance and mentorship support exists to ensure these pandemic entrepreneurs can thrive now and after the pandemic.
- Research has shown that more minority-owned businesses have been founded in 2020 than in the past two years, with Latino founders emerging as the fastest growing demographic among all new U.S. entrepreneurs.
Papers/publications related to research: theclintonfoundation.org/future-of-work
Social media mentions about research: facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fwatch%2F%3Fv%3D286087133144903

Faculty Advisor: Elise Chor

Email: tuk40467@temple.edu

Souradeep Banerjee

Description of research: The study investigates the question of why elections are so expensive in developing countries, such as India. The research project conducted unravels the mechanisms through which political fundraising happens during an election and the channels through which the funds are spent on both visible and less conspicuous forms of campaign activity. However, variations do exist in the mechanisms adopted by different parties and candidates.
Papers/publications related to research: Ashwani Kumar, Souradeep Banerjee and Shashwat Dhar (2020), Pathways of money: insights from the 2017 Gujarat assembly election, India Review, 19:5, 448-470, DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2020.1855012
Social media mentions about research: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14736489.2020.1855012

Faculty Advisor: Adam Ziegfeld

Student profile

Psychology

Tessa Clarkson

Description of research: Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often perform poorly on facial emotion recognition (FER) tasks. It’s unclear if this is due to difficulties in encoding or deployment of encoded facial emotion information from the brain to behavior. Using machine learning we classified facial emotions viewed by individuals with and without ASD from brain signals. Results indicate intact encoding in ASD, despite worse task performance, suggesting difficulties likely arise from deployment.
Papers/publications related to research: Clarkson, T. ¥, Mayor Torres, J.M. ¥, Hauschild, K.M., Luhmann, C.C., Lerner, M.D., Riccardi, G. (in press). Facial emotions are accurately encoded in the neural signal of those with autism: A deep learning approach (¥:joint first-authorship). Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.
Social media mentions about research: sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451902221001075?via%3Dihub

Faculty Advisor: Johanna Jarcho

Email: tuk38887@temple.edu

Religion

Ajoke Adebisi

Description of research: Yoruba religious beliefs and practices
Papers/publications related to research: Book review: Singing Yoruba Christianity: Music, Media, and Morality. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2018. Paperback. ISBN 9780253032096
Social media mentions about research: readingreligion.org/books/singing-yoruba-christianity

Faculty Advisor: Terry Rey

Email: tui83088@temple.edu

Jessica Sitek

Timothy Loftus

Frank R. Chappell

Description of research: The negotiation of Hindu religious identity and worldview in the U.S.
Conference presentations or highlights: 2021 American Philosophical Association Eastern Conference
Papers/publications related to research: Chappell, Frank R. "Formulating an ‘Epic Religiosity’: The Mahābhārata and Contemporary Hindu Traditions." Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies Vol. 11, No. 1, 2021 (forthcoming publication; date TBD fall 2021).

Faculty Advisor: Douglas Duckworth

Email: tuj04882@temple.edu

Spanish and Portuguese

Alodia Martin-Martinez

Description of research: Medieval and early modern studies, digital humanities
Conference presentations or highlights: A Virtual Middle Ages: 3D Models and Sketchfab in Language and Culture Learning in NeMLA 2021
Papers/publications related to research:
- ‘Mi poesía es platónica, mi prosa es aristotélica:’ Construcción y verdad en Estrella distante de Roberto Bolaño. In Chasqui: Revista de Literatura Latinoamericana. (Article using Digital Humanities).
- Qui bene amat, bene castigat: Cambio semántico del verbo ‘castigar’ a través de los Milagros de Nuestra Señora de Gonzalo de Berceo. In Revista Triangle: Lenguaje, literatura y computación.
- A book chapter ("Capitalism and the Antichrist") in a book currently under review
Awards or grants received: Dissertation Completion Grant (spring 2021)

Faculty Advisor: Montserrat Piera

Email: tuf69947@temple.edu

Daniel Guarin

Featured News

Grad Students’ & Alumnus’ Alley Cast Brings Philadelphia History to Life

by Nick Santangelo and Meg Kiernan

March 12

If you're going to spend a couple of years of your life studying history as a graduate student, you could do worse than choosing the Birthplace of the Nation as your study loc...

PSM in GIS Capstones Show Breadth of Graduates’ Career Opportunities

by Nick Santangelo

July 07

By: Nick Santangelo Geographic information systems (GIS) is a growing field, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicting a 35% growth in annual GIS job openings over the n...

Congratulations to Our Class of 2020 Graduate Students!

by Zac McGroarty

May 07

Congratulations to all of our master's and doctoral students joining Temple University's College of Liberal Arts' (CLA) Class of 2020! We know your final days with us weren't ...

Graduate Contact

College of Liberal Arts

Graduate Research

Research Opportunities

Research Awards for Advanced Doctoral Students (RAADS)

Student Research Highlights

Anthropology

English

History

Philosophy

Political Science

Psychology

Religion

Spanish and Portuguese

Featured News

Featured News

Grad Students’ & Alumnus’ Alley Cast Brings Philadelphia History to Life

PSM in GIS Capstones Show Breadth of Graduates’ Career Opportunities

Congratulations to Our Class of 2020 Graduate Students!

Go back to Research More in Research

College of Liberal Arts

Research Opportunities

Research Awards for Advanced Doctoral Students (RAADS)

Student Research Highlights

Anthropology

English

History

Philosophy

Political Science

Psychology

Religion

Spanish and Portuguese

Featured News

Featured News

Grad Students’ & Alumnus’ Alley Cast Brings Philadelphia History to Life

PSM in GIS Capstones Show Breadth of Graduates’ Career Opportunities

Congratulations to Our Class of 2020 Graduate Students!

Go back to ResearchMore in Research

Go back to Research More in Research