Graduate Research:
U.S. State Department, Diplomacy Lab Project #2 (WINTER 2018)
Advised by: Dr. Lauren Prather, in partnership with the Bureau for European and Eurasian Affairs.
Description: 10-week research project (Jan-Mar of 2018).
Researching the role of foreign aid in Moldova. Understanding the motivations of donors and the effectiveness of their aid.
Paper: "Foreign Aid in Moldova: Towards Western Integration."
U.S. State Department, Diplomacy Lab Project #1 (WINTER 2018)
Advised by: Dr. Barbara F. Walter, in partnership with the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala.
Description: 10-week research project (Jan-Mar of 2018).
Researching and identifying successful examples of anti-corruption reforms and recommendations to how they could be applied in Guatemala.
Paper: "Effective Anti-Corruption Reforms in Guatemala."
Undergraduate Research:
Independent Summer Research (SUMMER 2014)
Advised by: Dr. Irene V. Guenther.
Description: 10-week independent summer project (May-August of 2014).
The proposed project entailed investigating and analyzing the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine (or R2P), which is to be thought of as a muscular extension of the U.N. Genocide Convention. The research had me investigate and analyze R2P in-depth, and to examine if, in fact, it is a viable and purposeful “call to action” – a resolution that truly obligates a collective international response to crimes against humanity. Given the current catastrophes in Syria and in the Ukraine, the research shed light on issues of power politics and moral responsibility when galvanizing the international community to respond to crimes committed by governments against their citizens.
Paper: "The United Nations' Convention on Genocide Revisited for the 21st Century: The Responsibility to Protect and State Sovereignty--A Normative Approach to Humanitarian Intervention."
Provost Undergraduate Semester Research [PURS] (FALL 2013)
Advised by: Dr. Casey Dué Hackney.
Description: Semester research project (May-December of 2013).
For the PURS project, I became interested in the conceptions of ‘justice’ within the works of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Aeschylus’ Oresteia. My attempt was to trace the evolution of the concept of justice prior to the works of Plato and Aristotle, arguing that the modern understanding of justice has its origins in poetic traditions that predate the philosophical works. The research entailed becoming familiar with the Ancient Greek, which would help me determine how ‘justice’ was applied in the ancient texts. Its application would first require me to find the instances in which justice (often translated as dikê) was mentioned, and from then trying to understand the context in which it was used. However, in looking for dikê, I also had to look for atê (blindness/ruin), because they both intertwined in the texts, for atê is what brings the principal development of dikê. The Oresteia was the main text that I used in the research, because it was the medium that inherited the conceptual understandings of dikê and atê, developed within the Homeric epics.
What I discovered at the end of my PURS research, was that in the epics of Homer, justice was defined as a form that took a retributive standard, in which atê freed individuals from being accountable for their actions (as in the case of Achilles’ wrath). The realization then is the development of dikê, which establishes a justice not of retribution but of responsibility. When these two forms of justice funnel through to Aeschylus’ Oresteia, he exemplifies it by transforming atê’s agency into the Eumenides, where instead of being agents of retribution and blindness, they will be agents of responsibility, which establishes a method for man (and civil society) to achieve true justice.
Funded by UH's Provost Undergraduate Research Scholarship ($1,000).
Paper: "Δικη & Ατη in Homer and Aeschylus."
Blog: dikeproject.