Research Clusters

The DCII provides a home for informal, collaborative groups of scholars who wish to meet together to discuss and advance shared interdisciplinary interests. Clusters are convened by faculty, staff, and graduate students across campus, and are designed to benefit participants’ research or teaching activities.

Clusters meet at least twice each semester for meetings and events, including holding reading groups, bringing in speakers, organizing workshops, and developing joint research projects. The DCII provides funding and organizational support for these activities. Clusters are open to participants from any and all disciplines and departments at SMU, and some Clusters also welcome participants from other universities and the broader DFW community.

Below is a list of active Research Clusters. Faculty, staff, and students interested in participating in a Cluster should contact the Cluster conveners.

Research Clusters for AY 2024-25

Description:

This cluster explores current uses and potential applications and implications of AR/VR as a learning, teaching, and collaborative tool. In its inaugural year, the cluster will host two Lunch and Learns focusing on current literature, best practices, and examples of the implementation of AR/VR in higher education, and across disciplines on the ÃÛÌÒ½´campus in particular. It will also run a pilot study evaluating the use of 3 language-learning AR/VR applications among a sample of 50 undergraduate World Languages students to evaluate the impact of integrating AR/VR in higher ed classrooms on motivation, vocabulary retention, and second language acquisition. 

Conveners:

Description

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 ÃÛÌÒ½´as a leader in the evolving dialogue on AI and misinformation.

Conveners

Description

ÃÛÌÒ½´has many strengths to support research in the Data Sciences. One of these strengths has been the creation of the Data Science Cluster divided in three interrelated groups: Data Core, Technology-Enhanced Immersive Learning (TEIL), and Health Analytics. This Interdisciplinary group will have expertise in areas that include the learning sciences, artificial intelligence, machine learning, technology-enhanced learning, and assessment. The purpose of this specific Cluster's activities is to meet regularly in order to maximize the opportunities for immediate and long term success of this intercollege, interdisciplinary commitment by SMU.

Conveners

Description

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.

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Description:

This cluster brings together social sceintists and humanists to rethink the comparative study of political economy and society. 

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Description

This research cluster proposes to bring together faculty, staff, and graduate students with interests in Asian and Asian American studies. We intend to focus on two major and overlapping areas of scholarship and teaching:

  1. The intersection of Asian studies and Asian American studies
  2. The experiences and needs of Asian American and Pacific Islander community members at ÃÛÌÒ½´and the broader higher-education sector.

Our goals are to explore new research space and opportunities for collaboration, to advance creative teaching in Asian Studies, and to foster a campus environment inclusive of diverse perspectives.

Conveners 

Description:

This interdisciplinary research cluster investigates how creativity and social-emotional learning (SEL) can be applied in higher education to foster more inclusive, engaging, and emotionally responsive classrooms. Using frameworks such as Learning by Design and multiliteracies pedagogy, the cluster will explore digital tools like WeVideo to support student voice, emotional expression, and reflective learning. Participants will collaboratively design teaching materials, explore SEL and creativity across disciplines, and engage in peer feedback. The cluster aims to address the current gap in SEL-informed pedagogy at the university level through innovation, collaboration, and future classroom implementation.

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Description:

The Catalyst for Good cluster initiative at ÃÛÌÒ½´aims to provide a centralized platform that unites the various individual efforts in philanthropy, social impact, and non-profit engagement across campus into an interdisciplinary academic and practical exploration cluster. Each of SMU’s colleges has elements of social impact, philanthropy, or non-profit studies, yet there is no central venue for these efforts to converge. The lack of a central hub has been a significant gap in fully leveraging the potential of SMU’s diverse academic resources.

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Description

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. 

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Description:

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:

  1. How Cold War topics and themes explain current debates about international affairs and domestic politics
  2. 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.

 

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Description:

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 ÃÛÌÒ½´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. 

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Description: 

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. 

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Description

The Culture, Mind, and Brain Research Cluster started as a seminar during the 2021-2022 academic year. The seminar was co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology at ÃÛÌÒ½´Methodist University and the Department of Psychiatry at UT Southwestern Medical Center. The goal of the seminar was to foster collaborations between students and colleagues around shared interests related to the study of the mind and brain from western and nonwestern perspectives.

This coming year, the Culture, Mind, and Brain Research Cluster aim to expand on the success of the seminar to incorporate the interests of likeminded faculty at ÃÛÌÒ½´and strengthen the bridge between ÃÛÌÒ½´and UTSW in this research area.

Conveners

Description

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

Description

Through this research cluster, we aim to elevate the conversation around Human-Centered Design research and are excited to use this space to share our theories, methods, and tools with a broader research community. 

Conveners

Description

This research cluster will create a university-wide community of faculty, graduate students, and researchers in energy and environmental fields, such as engineering, law, business, and social science. This community will engage in research sharing to remove barriers between energy and environment, advancing holistic systems thinking to address critical issues such as resilience, climate change, energy poverty, and environmental justice. This cluster will build relationships and networks to encourage interdisciplinary relationship, with the goal of fostering an integrated and vibrant environment for grant applications, multi-author publishing, and cross-pollination of pedagogy.

Conveners

Description:

The ERAH Graduate Student Conference Cluster is centered around the yearly ERAH Conference. This cluster and conference promotes interdisciplinary research and community between PhD students in SMU’s English, Religious Studies, Anthropology, and History departments. In addition to the conference in October, the cluster also hosts a number of events focused on workshopping and developing papers for publication; together, we create a working group that seeks to produce rigorous and interdisciplinary scholarship and to foster relationship between Dedman’s graduate programs.

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Description

The purpose of this cluster is to collaborate with the Department of Anthropology and other interested university personnel to discuss and develop a research strategy to address two specific aims: i) assess baseline stress levels in the ÃÛÌÒ½´populations, and ii) develop an EIM led intervention (physical activity, meditation, or breathing exercise) designed to improve coping mechanisms, enhance parasympathetic tone and lower overall cortisol measures. This collaborative effort will provide a starting point for evaluating the "medicinal" impact of EIM-OC led initiatives on physiological variables in participants. 

Conveners

Description

The research cluster brings together faculty, graduate students and staff (IT & Library) who are interested in GIS (Geographic Information Systems, for mapping and spatial analysis). In the last two years the interdisciplinary group GIS@ÃÛÌÒ½´has made great strides in:

  1. Connecting ÃÛÌÒ½´faculty, graduate and undergraduate students who may be working independently in the area of spatial analysis
  2. Setting up a GIS lab in the Fondren library
  3. Bringing in leading experts on GIS from top-universities such as Stanford to run workshops
  4. Organizing activities such as a Mapathon to promote the use of GIS to undergraduates and the broader community at SMU.

GIS@ÃÛÌÒ½´is a true interdisciplinary group, bringing together faculty and students from across campus.

Conveners

Description

The rise of populist nationalist totalitarianism threatens democratic stability at home and globally. The Hannah Arendt Reading Group cluster will examine and learn from selected works by one of the most important political thinkers of the twentieth century —one whose work illuminates the threats of our time.

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Description:

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.

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Description

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 ÃÛÌÒ½´that addresses hazard and/or national security challenges with the goal of developing new and innovative avenues of research.

Conveners

Description

Methodism developed distinctively, out of a variety of revival movements distributed widely across denominations and across the Atlantic World. Because of its informal nature during its first decades, personal communications and relationship played crucial roles in shaping and nurturing the emerging tradition. The study of early Methodism thus opens a diverse range of questions about faith, institutional religion, political community, gender, and family, all during the extended Age of Revolutions. This research cluster will investigate these questions through shared readings, workshopping research in production, and by engaging scholars from around the country. 

Conveners

Description

This research cluster unites faculty from a range of academic and professional disciplines to discuss and define a set of shared goals and best practices to provide students with real-world, global perspectives and transferable skills aligned with skills employers seek in the contemporary workplace. Topics of discussion include curricular innovation, academic and corporate partnerships for internships and field work abroad and at home, and the assessment of and integration with SMU’s Common Curriculum requirements with a focus on the integration of world languages and cultures for professional purposes across the curriculum.

Conveners

Description

The “Medieval Matters” Research Cluster plans a year-long initiative to reinvigorate the strong, diverse, and engaged community of medievalists among the faculty and students at ÃÛÌÒ½´and in the metroplex area. As a working group, we will examine fresh methodological approaches to the study of the Middle Ages with the goal of generating opportunities for new collaborative teaching and research across disciplinary boundaries. Among other possibilities, we envision a fully vetted book and digital project (with national and international contributors) that advances current understandings of the uses and limits of transdisciplinary teaching/research in the Middle Ages.

Conveners

Description:

The Online Commons research cluster addresses the challenge of fostering community in SMU's expanding online graduate programs. Convened by faculty across public policy, education, and nonprofit leadership, the group will explore best practices for building connection, trust, and belonging in digital learning environments. Through twice-per-semester virtual meetings featuring guest speakers, interactive dialogues, and collaborative exercises, the cluster aims to strengthen interdisciplinary relationships and surface effective strategies for online engagement. Outcomes include shared insights, a public-facing best practices guide, and enhanced program design. 

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Description:

The overarching question here is what it means to be human in the context of science and culture by examining the behaviors humans use to observe, explore, and analyze themselves and their surroundings. “Being human” today has evolved into advocating, protecting, and defending people’s understandings of science, facts, etc. This project will engage with the learning community of teachers and students as STEAM initiatives provide strong intersections of science, art, and culture. The goal is to curate a proposal and pilot to secure external funding and thoughtful engagement of STEAM programming for young audiences, educators, and everyone interested in science. 

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Description

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

Description:

This research cluster establishes a university-wide community of faculty, students, and researchers in outer space science & resources, encompassing disciplines such as astrophysics, engineering, science, law, and political science. The cluster focuses on research collaboration to bridge gaps between space exploration, resource utilization, and sustainable development areas. The cluster pursues theoretical and experimental research in these varying fields, exploring both fundamental questions of the universe and practical challenges related to governance, exploration, and extraction. This initiative aims to advance systems thinking to address critical issues such as asteroid mining, space debris management, and planetary protection. The cluster fosters interdisciplinary relationships, promoting an integrated environment for securing grants, multi-author publications, and innovative teaching methodologies.

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Description

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

Description

This research cluster brings together faculty, staff, and graduate students to explore what sustainability looks like across ÃÛÌÒ½´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

Description

This interdisciplinary research cluster addresses the unique academic experiences of graduate student-athletes at SMU, especially in light of the university's transition to the ACC. Focusing on both research and pedagogy, the cluster aims to support these students by gathering data through focus groups, developing tailored teaching resources, and fostering faculty dialogue. Planned activities include faculty surveys, design-based research, monthly stakeholder meetings, and a public speaker series. Outcomes will include pedagogical interventions, strengthened faculty engagement, and a peer-reviewed publication, contributing to national conversations on graduate education and student-athlete success. 

Conveners

Description

Building on our previous reading of Dante's Divine Comedy, this cluster will now turn tot he Spanish writer Teresa de Avila (1515-1582). Specifically, we will explore the relationship she establishes between writing and the spiritual journey in her two most well-known works: The Way of Perfection (Camino de Perfeccion, 1566) and The Interior Castle (Las Moradas, 1577). We believe that reading Teresa de Avila will allow us to continue examining a theme we encountered in our study of Dante- namely, the trope of the spiritual journey as a transformative process for the individual, and an experience in which writing plays a fundamental role. 

Conveners

Description

Over the course of a year, many people find themselves in poverty and lacking shelter. Whether due to the pandemic, mental illness, diminished opportunity, unfortunate life choices, or trauma in their past. Poverty, particularly homelessness, is a symptom of a deeper, broader problem. One's beliefs about the causes of homelessness can significantly impact the level and longevity of support given. At a time when students are exploring who they are and what they stand for, universities have the opportunity to introduce them to coursework and experiences that challenge their thinking and perception. This research cluster aims to add to the ongoing undergraduate perceptions of poverty/homeless research, and further bolster current homeless awareness efforts on campus.

Conveners

Description:

The Texas Redistricting Collective will bring together experts in mathematics and algorithm development in redistricting and gerrymandering for virtual seminars, in-person workshops, and a tutorial. We will focus on Texas-based researchers and Texas-specific redistricting problems will be included in our research.

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Description

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

Description:

The cluster addresses the urgent need to examine the complexity and precarity of neighborhood infrastructure- small-scale, distributed systems upon which everyday urban livelihoods, safety, and social meaning increasingly depend. Despite the critical role that infrastructure plays in shaping everyday life, existing scholarship has been dominated by quantitative approaches that often overlook how ordinary people perceive, interpret, and navigate these networks in their daily routines. Drawing on interdisciplinary tools-such as transect walks, in-depth interviews, participatory community mapping- our aim is to examine how infrastructure such as public transit, green-space, healthcare shape people's everyday social and economic decisions and survival strategies.

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Description:

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. 

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Description:

This research cluster focuses on tribal sovereignty and natural resources, bringing together scholars, students, community and tribal partners to examine the legal, political, economic, and cultural dimensions of Indigenous self-determination in natural resource governance. It supports those involved in collaborative, community0informed research that explores how Native Nations exercise sovereign authority over land, water, energy, and mineral resources, and how these practices intersect with federal policies, environmental stewardship, and economic development. By fostering interdisciplinary engagement across law, policy, environmental science, history, and Indigenous studies, the cluster aims to advance understanding, inform policymaking, and support Tribal capacity-building in natural resource management.

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Description:

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.

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