Faculty from 6 departments have received funding, through the College of Liberal Arts Travel Grant Program, to go to Europe, Canada, and Washington, D.C., to participate in activities that will advance the impact of their creative and scholarly research.
The competitive grants allow tenured and tenure-track faculty opportunities to conduct data-gathering trips, present original research at national and international conferences, and develop collaborative opportunities in support of the faculty member's research.
The travel grant program is jointly funded by CLA and the WSU Office of Research.
"These travel activities were selected for funding because they provided our scholars with unique opportunities to increase the visibility and impact of our research and creative endeavors," said Paul Whitney, CLA associate dean for agency-funded research. "What that means for our students is that they are taught by scholars who stay at the cutting edge of their disciplines. That's what it means to attend college at a major research university."
Greg Yasinitsky (professor, music) will travel to Vienna, Austria. His musical composition Concertino for Flute and Orchestra was selected in a competitive audition process for programming and recording at the 13th annual Festival of New Music for Orchestra and Chorus, which will be held June 30 to July 4 in Vienna.
Claire Metelits (assistant professor, political science) will travel to the Basque Country in Spain to conduct research on the political behavior of the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) and how its relationship with non-combatant populations has evolved over time. This research will complete a 4-case comparative study for a book manuscript that traces the historical development of insurgent groups.
Rick Busselle (associate professor, communication) will go to the University of Leuven, Belgium, to present collaborative research and begin an international project on international media coverage of social issues and how this coverage relates to and shapes both public policy and public attitudes.
Kim Christen (assistant professor, comparative ethnic studies) will serve on a panel on culture and property at the Conference of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore, to be held in June in Derry, Ireland. She will present the software system she developed to power an indigenous digital archive to be used by an Aboriginal community in Central Australia.
William Andrefsky (professor and chair, anthropology) will attend an international symposium, "Integrated Methodological Approaches to the Study of Lithic Technology," sponsored by the Instituto Italiano Di Preistoria E Protostoria in Florence, Italy. He will be presenting a formal paper at the conference and exchanging ideas on differing techniques of analysis with his European counterparts.
Andrew Duff (associate professor, anthropology) attended the annual conference of the Society for American Archaeology in Vancouver, B.C., in March, where he conducted a half-day symposium for international scholars on "Politics of Population Reorganization" and presented a formal paper.
Jason Farman (assistant professor, English; director, digital technology and culture, WSU Tri-Cities) will attend the Digital Humanities Conference in Oulu, Finland, and present his paper "Mapping the Digital Empire: Google Earth and the Process of Postmodern Cartography."
Mark Stephan (associate professor, political science, WSU Vancouver) will conduct archival research and interviews at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C., for his book-length project "Experts and Amateurs: The Evolution of Citizen Involvement Policy at the Environmental Protection Agency."
The Chronicle, College of Liberal Arts, Washington State University