Research Clusters 2025-2026
Below is a list of 2025-2026 Research Clusters. Faculty, staff, and students interested in participating in a Cluster should contact the Cluster conveners.
Artificial Intelligence and Misinformation
This interdisciplinary research cluster explores how artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates the creation and spread of online misinformation (e.g., deepfakes, cloned voices, and fake news). With AI-generated misinformation rising rapidly, the cluster aims to develop innovative solutions through collaboration across communication, advertising, management, data science, and related fields. Activities will include regular meetings, collaborative projects, research seminars, and curriculum integration, all designed to enhance both scholarly understanding and public AI literacy. By addressing one of today's most pressing challenges, the cluster will position SMU as a leader in the evolving dialogue on AI and misinformation.
Conveners: Quan Xie, Benjamin Dow, Jing Cao, Joe Phua
Arts as Cultural Protection in Times of Unrest
This Research Cluster brings together faculty, staff, and graduate students to discuss and collaborate on a series of workshops and presentations that decolonize annual Mexican American celebrations in Texas and their commodification. The first in this series is the "Fiesta is Racist" workshop, which focuses on the annual celebration hosted by the city of San Antonio. The other celebration will center on Day of the Dead. Participants in the cluster will discuss how best to use academic spaces to facilitate community events and workshops revolving around Mexican American Studies. We will welcome the public into these academic spaces to engage with history through an interactive, interdisciplinary approach.
Conveners: Edgar Velazquez Reynald, Kristel Orta-Puente, Laura Narvaez
Christianity and Scholarship
We seek to create an internal conversation among faculty about how the Christian faith informs and interacts with their scholarship and research. We seek to bring external scholars on this intersection to campus as well to stir further interest and study.
Conveners: Benjamin Voth, Denise Dupont, Matthew Wilson
Cold Warriors
Understanding relations with China and Russia could not be more critical in both the United States and the world. This research cluster proposes to bring together faculty, staff, and graduate students with interests in the Cold War and the New Cold War, broadly defined. We intend to focus on two major and overlapping areas of scholarship:
- How Cold War topics and themes explain current debates about international affairs and domestic politics
- The impact and legacy of the Cold War versus the New Cold War
This cluster will be of particular interest to those in history, political science, international relations, economics, and business.
Conveners: Holly Harris, Bradley Petty
Community Engagement
Community-engaged Teaching and Learning practices foster meaningful connections between academic learning and public life. Applicable across all disciplines, these practices encourage students to apply classroom knowledge and real-world contexts through reciprocal partnerships with community organizations. This research cluster will bring together SMU students, faculty, and staff to examine the pedagogical and scholarly value of community-engaged teaching, share experiences implementing it in diverse content areas, and explore strategies for deepening its impact through intentional course and program design.
Conveners: Brittaney Wilson, Dustin Grabsch, Belle Diaz
Contested Currents: Energy and Environment in an Interconnected World
This research cluster proposes to bring together faculty, staff, and graduate students from the humanities and sciences with interests in energy regimes and the complicated relationship between humans and the environment. We intend to examine humanity's interactions with the natural world, the rise and fall of natural and processed resources, and how the environment and energy influenced economic, political, and social thinking of the time. We will explore themes such as economics, federalism, labor, national security, race, public health, and urban development. By understanding the interconnectedness of energy structures, environmental ecosystems and human impact we hope to encourage interdisciplinary relationships.
Conveners: Thomas Pelchat, Emma Armstrong
Earth Hazards and National Security
Two critical and interconnected issues facing the United States and Texas today are Earth Hazards and National Security. With existing and emerging challenges associated with climate change and an increasingly multipolar world, addressing these challenges requires research on natural and human systems, technical innovation and advanced monitoring and data analyses approaches. The research cluster brings together researchers (faculty, staff, students) to review significant research ongoing or planned at SMU that addresses hazard and/or national security challenges with the goal of developing new and innovative avenues of research.
Conveners: Heather DeShon, Alejandro Aceves, Stephen Arrowsmith, Kate Smits
Empathic Pedagogy and Writing Research Cluster
The Empathetic Pedagogy and Writing Research Cluster will gather faculty from across the campus who are interested in reading, discussing, and promoting an array of texts and scholarship involving the study of writing composition and critical reasoning. our cluster is designed to be in line with SMU's initiative, as put forth by the Office of Cultural Intelligence, to "implement the principles of cultural intelligence in our daily lives." This research cluster will also support our pedagogy planning and interactions with students.
Conveners: Triauna Carey, Jill Kelly, Samantha Mabry
Interdisciplinary Narrative Arts
This proposed cluster brings together faculty from across disciplines who teach and create in the narrative arts- screenwriting, playwriting, fiction writing, creative nonfiction, and other forms of narrative expression.
Conveners: Jennifer Prediger, Michelle Glasby-Millington
The North Texas Policy and Governance Lab
The North Texas Policy and Governance Lab is an interdisciplinary research cluster focused on regional policymaking, institutional design, and political leadership. Grounded in real-world governance, the cluster explores how public policy is developed and implemented across North Texas, addressing challenges in education, economic development, immigration, and election administration. Participants will examine legal frameworks, AI in governance, and the evolving Texas-Mexico relationship. Open to faculty, graduate students, and local practitioners, the cluster promotes nonpartisan collaboration and produces working papers, public forums, and workshops to support academic research and prepare the next generation of public leaders.
Conveners: Roberto Mijangos, Madeley Rodriguez, Lupe Torres, David Doyle, Ben Voth
Science, Technology and Society in the Contemporary World
Science, Technology, and Society (STS) is an interdisciplinary field that explores how science and technology are shaped by political values, cultural norms, societal structures, and ethics. It critically examines the reciprocal relationship between science, technology, and society, focusing on the ways in which technology influences social change and is influenced by various societal forces. Topics of study include the technology of development process, the formulation of technology policies, and the broader social impacts of innovation. STS engages with critical areas such as public health, policy analysis, digital ethics, artificial intelligence (AI), sustainability solutions, and engineering education. This interdisciplinary STS research cluster aims to address contemporary technological challenges by fostering critical thinking and collaboration across disciplines between students and faculty, while enhancing SMU's reputation as a leader in innovative, socially engaged research.
Conveners: Pratyusha Kiran, Anthony Petrosino, Jennifer Matey, Max Sherard, Cindy Hua
Staying in the Room: Feminist Responses to the Neoliberal and Illiberal University
This cluster asks what tools or ways of thinking feminism offers to help us "stay in the room"- that is, to create spaces of resistance and refuge within a system of higher education that often values profit and prestige over collective well-being. Bringing recent feminist discourses to bear on our own lived experiences, and to the experiences of those occupying marginalized positions in academia (e.g. non-tenure-track faculty, graduate students, people of color, women and minority genders) this research cluster will consider alternatives to the values and practices of the neoliberal university.
Conveners: Juliet Shields, Alexis McCrossen, Amy Richardson
Sustainability at SMU
This research cluster brings together faculty, staff, and graduate students to explore what sustainability looks like across SMU and how to foster interdisciplinary collaboration. In its first phase, the cluster will map existing efforts, identify stakeholders, and build a campus-wide community focused on sustainability in academics and campus culture. insights from this phase will inform future work to develop a practical framework for a cross-campus sustainability committee and long-term governance.
Conveners: Jasleen Dhillon, Monika Ehrman, Oppong Hemeng, Marissa Heyl, Christopher Hill
Time as Material: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Metal Casting
This research cluster unites Art and Anthropology faculty around SMU's foundry to explore metal casting as both historical practice and contemporary technique. Metal casting- a pivotal technological development in human history- remains crucial yet increasingly inaccessible. Through community casting days, scholarly exchange, and hands-on creation with aluminum and bronze, we examine how material practices are temporal practices that shape and are shaped by history. The project returns industrially processed metals to human scale, preserving foundry knowledge while fostering critical inquiry. Activities include community foundry pour events and a guest speaker.
Conveners: Emily Budd, Matthew Abel, Kerry Maguire, Dana Buzzee
Urban Research: What Makes a City
Perhaps all imaginable answers to the question "What Makes a City?" boil down to certain essentials: heart, mind, body, soul. Healthy cities nurture and inspire the body politic. Dynamic cities engender love and nourish creativity. They cultivate institutions worthy of public trust. To function even minimally, cities require technology and thoughtful infrastructure. Inviting cities make space for creativity and conviviality; walkable neighborhoods, inviting parks, waterways, thriving artistic communities, safe gathering places. This cluster will unite scholars, students and citizens interested in the city of Dallas; its cultural, political and environmental dynamics, exploring how urban spaces are shaped, experienced, and transformed.
Conveners: Seemee Ali, Jessie Zarazaga, Christie Bondade