Directory

Scholar (2015), Certificate in American Constitutional Democracy
Fares grew up on a farm near Columbia, Missouri, and studied Geography and Political Science at Mizzou. He was a Kinder Scholar during the inaugural year of the Washington, D.C. program. After Mizzou, Fares studied law at Stanford and has since worked as an associate at a law firm in DC and as a law clerk to judges on federal trial and appellate courts in Chicago and D.C.

Liam Arnzen, a senior from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, will return to the University of Missouri in Fall 2024 after participating in a pilot program at the University College London for the 2023-2024 academic year. Liam is currently pursuing BAs in Constitutional Democracy and History, as well as a minor in Business. In addition to his academic pursuits, he spends time with the Mizzou Swim Club, the Newman Center, and various other Kinder affiliated programs and events. After completing his undergraduate degree, Liam plans to continue his education, pursuing either a Master’s Degree or Juris Doctorate, and in his spare time, he enjoys walking and studying the Council of Trent.

Alan L. Atterbury received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Missouri and his J.D. from the University of Missouri School of Law. He served as an active-duty Army officer, after which he acted as Attorney Advisor to Federal Power Commission Vice-Chairman Pinkroy C. Walker, former Dean of the MU School of Business and practiced law as a partner at Morrison & Hecker (now Stinson, Leonard, Street). Mr. Atterbury was co-founder and founding CEO of Midland Loan Services (MLS), a national real estate financial services company based in Overland Park, KS. MLS, now owned by PNC Financial Services, is currently the nation’s second-largest commercial real estate loan servicer with approximately $400 billion of loans under management. Mr. Atterbury continues to be active in Midland Properties, Inc., a local investment management company. He has served as a board member at the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, the Midwest Research Institute, and the Kansas City Missouri Police Foundation, and as chair of the UMKC Trustees and UMKC Foundation boards. He is married to Mary Pearson Atterbury, a graduate of the MU School of Education, and they have three children: Jennifer, Andrew, and David.

Assistant Dean Emeritus, MU School of Law, baileyr@missouri.edu
Bob Bailey is a 1968 graduate of Marist College and a 1979 graduate of the University of Missouri -Columbia School of Law, where he commenced his career after graduation. In 1983, Prof. Bailey became the City of Columbia’s Municipal Judge, serving for four years before returning to the MU Law School full time in 1987 as the Assistant Dean and Senior Fellow. Prof. Bailey is also Vice President of the National Academy of Arbitrators and has an active labor and sports arbitration practice. In addition, he is a Commissioner for the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniformed State Laws (NCCUSL), and he serves on the Uniform Athlete Agent Act and the Veterans Court Act drafting committees. Prof. Bailey is actively involved in campus committee work and chairs the mid-month Institutional Review Board (IRB), and he has a long history of community services. Presently, he chairs Boone County Family Resources, an agency providing services to 1,300 developmentally disabled citizens, and in the past, he has chaired the Family Health Center, the Central Missouri Food Bank, and the Regional Aids Inter-Faith Network (RAIN). He served as Director of the Law School’s nationally renowned Center for Dispute Resolution from 2005-2013, and he teaches Arbitration, a Lawyering Seminar, a first-year Lawyering class, and a Freshman Interest Group (FIG). Prof. Bailey is married to Sharon, and they have two daughters and four grandchildren.

Originally from Willow Springs, Missouri, Jackson Bailey is a second-year sophomore double-majoring in Constitutional Democracy (Law & Institutions) and Political Science (American Politics/Public Policy), with a minor in History. During his short-time at the University of Missouri, Jackson has already engaged in multiple extracurricular and experiential activities, including the Kinder Institute Society of Fellows and legislative internships in both Jefferson City and Washington, D.C. Jackson is also an ambassador to the College of Arts and Science, and while away from his studies, he enjoys reading, spending time with family, and making new connections within the Mizzou community. Jackson ultimately wishes to attend the University of Missouri School of Law and pursue a career in constitutional law or professional lobbying.

Lauren Bayne is a rising senior from Chesterfield, Missouri, majoring in Elementary Education and Political Science. Her academic interests are the tangible effects of legislation and political initiatives on P-12 learning and providing engaging Critical social studies education to K-5 students. She prefers to spend time in the elementary school classroom, learning from her first and fifth graders, but on Mizzou’s campus she can be found planning countless events and programs through her roles as Chair of Programming for the Panhellenic Accessibility Committee, the Director of Programming for ASUM, and Events Director for her sorority. Following graduation, Lauren is ecstatic to teach (hopefully) fourth and fifth graders with eventual plans to go into education policy so she can continue to serve children.

Jean Becker was chief of staff for George H.W. Bush from March 1, 1994, until his death on November 30, 2018. She supervised his office operations in both Houston, Texas, and Kennebunkport, Maine, overseeing such events as the opening of the George Bush Presidential Library Center in 1997 and the commissioning of the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier in January 2009 and coordinating his special projects such as the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund. She took a leave of absence in 1999 to edit and research, All the Best, George Bush; My Life in Letters and Other Writings.

Previously, Ms. Becker served as deputy press secretary to First Lady Barbara Bush from 1989 to 1992.  After the 1992 election, she moved to Houston to help Mrs. Bush with the editing and research of her autobiography, Barbara Bush, A Memoir.  She later assisted Mrs. Bush with a follow-up book, Reflections, published in 2003.

Before joining the Bush White House staff in 1989, Ms. Becker was a newspaper reporter for 10 years, including a four-year stint at USA TODAY, where her duties included covering the 1988 presidential election and serving as a Page One editor.

Ms. Becker grew up on a family farm in Martinsburg, Missouri, and was valedictorian of her country high school.  She graduated from the University of Missouri in 1978 with a bachelor’s in journalism and a bachelor’s in arts with a major in political science. She was recognized as an outstanding alumnus by the University of Missouri in 2017.

She is a member of the board of directors for Points of Light, the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, and the George and Barbara Bush Foundation. She also is a member of the advisory board of The George Bush Presidential Library Center and The George Bush School of Government and Public Service. Her book about Mrs. Bush, Pearls of Wisdom, was a New York Times best-seller when it was released on March 3, 2020. She is working on a second book about President Bush’s post presidency, to be published in 2021.

Originally from Cambridge, Matt Bell studied history at the University of Oxford, receiving a First Class degree in Summer 2023. Since then, he has been teaching English as a Foreign Language at a language school in Cambridge.

While his studies at Oxford covered a wide range of history and geography, from the fall of the Aztecs to the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, his main focus was on US history where possible. He took papers on civil rights pioneers of the late 19th early 20th centuries and US history from the American Revolutionary War to the Philippine-American War, and carried out an undergraduate dissertation on civil unrest in Detroit in 1967. His main areas of interest are popular unrest, the evolution of the civil rights movement, and economic history. He is particularly looking forward to studying the complex economic, cultural, and political links that have spanned and continue to span the Atlantic Ocean.

In his spare time, he listens to music, plays the piano and guitar, and reads in cafes and pubs.

TJ Benoist is a sophomore from Farmington, MO, majoring in Constitutional Democracy, with an emphasis in Law and Institutions, and minoring in History and Political Science. He serves as Communications Director for Mizzou College Democrats, is a member of the Kinder Institute Undergraduate Society, and works as a Kinder Democracy Lab Fellow helping plan and lead field trips for incoming freshman. Additionally, TJ is a candidate for County Commissioner in his home of St. Francois County. After completing undergrad, TJ plans to attend law school and pursue a career as an attorney. In his free time TJ enjoys binging political TV series such as The West Wing, The Newsroom, and Madam Secretary.

Gwen Blevins is a junior from Kansas City, MO, majoring in Constitutional Democracy and International Studies, with minors in Spanish, History, and Political Science. Gwen is involved on campus with the Missouri Debate Union as the Director of Programming, Mizzou Model United Nations as Parliamentarian, and the Kinder Undergraduate Society. She also works as a Research Assistant with Dr. Soren Larsen on a project related to Place Based Learning. In her free time, Gwen enjoys crocheting, playing video games with friends, and reading comics. Gwen is passionate about international affairs and Indigenous rights and she hopes to attend graduate school to pursue a career in the Department of State.

Barak Boswell is from St. Robert, Missouri. He graduated from Ozark Technical Community College in 2022 with an Associate’s Degree in General Studies and from Mizzou in 2024 with a Bachelor of Arts in History and a minor in Black Studies.

He is interested in a variety of historical topics from the colonization of the Americas to the rise of the Soviet Union and the United States as global superpowers in the 20th century. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, watching movies, and studying history.

Trent Bracht is a rising senior from Warrenton, Missouri. He is studying Political Science. Trent is involved in multiple extracurriculars on campus, including two campus ministries, Salt Company and the Christian Campus House, and the Washington Society, an organization dedicated to debating philosophy. Outside of class, Trent likes to spend his spare time going on walks and line dancing. Trent’s career goals involve attending law school upon graduation, after which he plans to seek a job in constitutional law that will utilize his interests in politics and the law.

Thomas Bruns is a sophomore at Mizzou, majoring in Constitutional Democracy and Journalism and minoring in French. He is involved in the Kinder Institute Undergraduate Society, Democracy Lab Fellowship program, and Mizzou J-School. Outside of school, Thomas enjoys watching movies and following (and covering) American politics and the entertainment industry.

Maddie Bunger is a junior from Roscoe, Illinois, studying Biology and Health Science, with a focus on Leadership and Policy. On campus, Maddie is a member of the Little Sisters of the Golden Rose service sorority and the College of Health Sciences Fraternity, Sigma Eta Rho, and outside of school, enjoys hiking, spending time with friends, wasting too much money at Target, and reading. After graduation, Maddie plans to pursue a career in medicine or healthcare policy and law after graduation.

Laine Cibulskis is a third-year student from Bolingbrook, Illinois, pursing a dual degree in Journalism and Political Science with minors in Economics and Constitutional Democracy. An aspiring data and investigative reporter covering political and economic policy issues, Laine currently serves as a health and higher education reporter with the Columbia Missourian and KBIA, mid-Missouri’s NPR-affiliate; an editorial assistant with Investigative Reporters and Editors; a grader for the MU Economics Department; and treasurer for MU’s chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, a political science honors society. When not writing or studying, Laine loves to hike, rollerblade, run, write poetry, take artsy photos, and paint.

Kinder Institute Associate Director, colemanw@missouri.edu
Billy Coleman is Associate Director of the Kinder Institute, teaches and co-coordinates the Kinder-Honors sequence in Revolutions and Constitutions, and directs the Kinder Institute Democracy Lab. He is the author of Harnessing Harmony: Music, Power, and Politics in the United States, 1788-1865 (University of North Carolina Press)—winner of the American Musicological Society’s H. Robert Cohen/RIPM Award— and his research exploring the relationship between music and politics in early America also appears in the Journal of Southern History, the Journal of the Early Republic, and Oxford Bibliographies in American Literature. He was Book Reviews Editor of American Nineteenth Century History for five years and recently co-edited a special issue on music in American nineteenth-century history for the same publication. Dr. Coleman completed his Ph.D. in History at University College London (UCL) and held postdoctoral fellowships at the Kinder Institute and the University of British Columbia before returning to the Kinder Institute in 2020. Born in Houston, Texas, he grew up in Sydney, Australia, where he graduated with a BA (Hons) in history and politics from the University of New South Wales (UNSW). 

Associate Professor of Law and Constitutional Democracy, conklinc@missouri.edu
Carli N. Conklin is the Kinder Institute Associate Director, Associate Professor at the School of Law, and Associate Professor of Constitutional Democracy in the College of Arts & Science.

Professor Conklin’s research interests are in American legal and intellectual history. She completed her B.S. in English and M.A. in Education at Truman State University and studied law and history at the University of Virginia through a joint J.D./M.A. program in American legal history. She was awarded the School of Law’s Madeleine and John Traynor Prize for her Master’s thesis, which explored state court treatment of arbitration in early America. Professor Conklin served as Associate Professor of History and Co-Director of the Pre-Law Professional Program at John Brown University before returning to U.Va. to complete her Ph.D. in History. Her dissertation explored the meaning of the pursuit of happiness in historical context.

Professor Conklin’s research has been published by the American Journal of Legal History, the Ohio State University Journal on Dispute Resolution, the University of Missouri Journal of Dispute Resolution, and the Washington University Jurisprudence Review. Her recent book, The Pursuit of Happiness in the Founding Era:  An Intellectual History, was published through the Kinder Institute’s Studies in Constitutional Democracy monograph series with the University of Missouri Press.

Professor Conklin teaches courses in lawyering and dispute resolution at the School of Law and courses on intellectual history at the Kinder Institute. She serves as the Kinder Institute Director of Undergraduate Studies, coordinating, among other things, the Society of Fellows program and the Constitutionalism and Democracy Honors College course series.

Sr. Academic Advisor (Constitutional Democracy & History), corneillierb@missouri.edu
Born and raised in Keystone, Colorado, Brittony (Corneillier) Hein has a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies with an emphasis in Peace Studies, as well as a Graduate Certificate in Public Health from Mizzou. She is currently finishing up her Master’s of Education from Stephens College in Counseling. Prior to becoming the Senior Academic Advisor for Constitutional Democracy and History, she was with the Division of Biological Sciences as an Academic Advisor for five years, and prior to advising, she spent two years in the office of admissions. Brittony has been awarded the College of Arts and Science Academic Advisor of the Year (2021), Excellence in Advising Outstanding Advising Winner (2021), and the Blue Chalk Teaching Award (Fall 2017). In addition to her role as an Academic Advisor, she serves on a variety of committees throughout the College of Arts and Science and the university.

Anna Cowden is a rising senior from Overland Park, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City, Mo. She is double majoring in Journalism (strategic communications) and Constitutional Democracy (politics and policy). Other than Kinder Scholars, she was a Kinder Fellow her junior year and a member of the inaugural class of the Kinder Institute Residential College her freshman year. She is currently a Kinder Ambassador. Anna spent her first two years at MU as a reporter and copy chief at the university’s independent-run student newspaper, The Maneater. Anna has corporate communications and marketing experience as a two-summer intern for CommunityAmerica Credit Union and is a regular collaborator with the marketing team at the Kansas City Area Development Council (KCADC). Anna spends her free time watching the Royals (Hey, they’re getting better!), cooking vegan food, and listening to podcasts.

Judge C.A. Leedy Professor of Law, MU School of Law, crouchdd@missouri.edu
Professor Crouch is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Missouri School of Law. Prior to joining the MU Law Faculty, he was a patent attorney at McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP in Chicago, Illinois, and taught at Boston University Law School. He has worked on cases involving various technologies including computer memory and hardware, circuit design, software, networking, mobile and internet telephony, automotive technologies, lens design, bearings, HVAC systems, and business methods. He is also the editor of the popular patent law weblog: Patently-O.

Professor Crouch received his BSE in mechanical engineering cum laude from Princeton University, where he also earned a certificate in engineering management systems. He then earned his JD cum laude from the University of Chicago Law School. While at the University of Chicago, he was a Microsoft, Merck, & Pfizer Scholar and a member of the Olin Program in Law and Economics.
Prior to attending law school, Professor Crouch worked as a technical consultant for manufacturing firms in New England, as a research fellow at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, as a software developer at the Mayo Clinic’s department of biomedical imaging, and as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana, West Africa. Dennis Crouch grew up on a farm near Pittsburg, Kansas.

Grace Cunningham is a sophomore from Columbia, Missouri studying Environmental Science with a minor in Political Science. At Mizzou, she is involved with Kappa Alpha Theta which has given her the opportunity to take part in Mizzou traditions such as Homecoming and serving on the house decks committee. Aside from school, Grace enjoys being outside and is always planning her next adventure. Grace wants to have a career working with environmental policy for climate change mitigation.

Originally from Wrexham in Wales, Rhian Davies graduated from Cardiff University in 2024 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History. She joins the Atlantic History and Politics MA cohort as the 2024-25 Kinder-BrANCH Fellow.

Rhian’s research interests are broad, having completed her undergraduate dissertation on tribalism in the postcolonial Kenyan developmental state, particularly its impact on Maasai communities. Her interests lie in global histories, having previously explored Kenyan, British, French, German, US, and Indian history. At Mizzou, Rhian would like to explore pan-African histories.

In her free time, Rhian enjoys reading political and social science books on black British history, listening to music, sports, and singing.

Hope Davis is a junior from Atlanta, Georgia, studying journalism, political science, constitutional democracy, and humanities. She is currently a city and county government reporter at the Columbia Missourian focusing on covering housing issues, as well as a Kinder Ambassador and Journalism Ambassador. Hope spent her freshman and sophomore years as a copy editor and copy chief at MU’s campus newspaper, the Maneater, and she enjoys (and will talk at length about) feminist thought and philosophy, fashion history, and classic film.

DPAA Research Partner Fellow, crdkf9@missouri.edu
Chris Deutsch is the University of Missouri DPAA Research Partner Fellow. He provides historical research support for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) and the Agency’s mission “to provide the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel to their families and the nation.” He is working on a manuscript under advanced contract with the University of Nebraska Press, tentatively titled, “Beeftopia: The Red Meat Politics of Prosperity in Postwar America,” on the role of public policy and politics in the rise of beef production and consumption in the decades after World War II. The book will explore the government’s efforts to secure beef, which was a key metric of affluence and which Americans measured nightly on their dinner plates. He has previously taught history at the University of Missouri, including courses on food history, the 1980s, and the twentieth century. He earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in history at California State University, Sacramento, and a Ph.D. from at the University of Missouri.

Kinder Institute Professor of Constitutional Democracy, Professor of Political Science, dow@missouri.edu
Jay Dow is Professor of Political Science and 2017-2020 Frederick A. Middlebush Chair in Political Science. Before coming to the University of Missouri, he earned an undergraduate degree at the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Dow’s research focuses on voting and elections, which he approaches from the public choice tradition in political science, as reflected in his recent book, Electing the House: The Adoption and Performance of the Single-Member District Electoral System (University Press of Kansas, March 2017). Professor Dow regularly teaches courses on American government, parties and elections, and American political thought, as well as the “Constitutional Debates” course for the Kinder Institute’s Honors College series, and he also organizes the Jefferson Book Club, an extracurricular undergraduate reading group that meets monthly to discuss great books in the classical liberal tradition.

Dean, MU College of Arts & Science, drury@missouri.edu
Cooper Drury is the Dean of the College of Arts and Science and Professor in the Truman School of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Missouri. He earned his BA and MA from Michigan State University and his PhD from Arizona State University.

His primary research and teaching interests focus on foreign policy. Specifically, he studies the causes, outcomes, and consequences of economic sanctions. Professor Drury has authored or co-authored two books, an award-winning textbook, and over two dozen articles and chapters. A committed teacher, Professor Drury has trained 25 doctoral students and has been awarded multiple teaching and mentorship awards. In his field, Professor Drury served as editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy Analysis and as the 2016 International Studies Association program co-chair, and was awarded the Foreign Policy Analysis Distinguished Scholar Award, Quincy Wright Distinguished Scholar Award, and the Ladd Hollist Service Award.

At the University of Missouri, he has served as department chair, on the faculty council and intercampus faculty council, and led numerous campus and system-level committees.

Professor and Chair, Department of Black Studies, Director, Peace Studies Program, dunkleyd@missouri.edu
Daive Dunkley is Professor and Chair in the MU Department of Black Studies, Director of Mizzou’s Peace Studies Program, and an affiliate faculty member at the Kinder Institute and in the Departments of History and Religious Studies. His research focuses on the history and culture of the Caribbean and the wider Black Atlantic, and he has authored publications exploring slave resistance, British colonialism, decolonization, and the politics of the Rastafari. He is the author, co-author, or editor of several books, including Readings in Caribbean History and Culture: Breaking Ground (2011), Agency of the Enslaved: Jamaica and the Culture of Freedom in the Atlantic World (2013), Leonard Percival Howell and the Genesis of the Rastafari (2015), and Black Resistance in the Americas (2019). Additionally, his book chapters and articles include “Enslaved Africans and the Transformation of Society in Brazil and the Caribbean: A View from the Churches,” published in the collection The African Heritage in Brazil and the Caribbean (2011), and “The Politics of Repatriation and the First Rastafari, 1932-1940,” published in Souls (2018). Prof. Dunkley has a strong desire to educate others about Black history and its implications for the present.

Abigail Durkin is a junior from Chicago, Illinois, majoring in Journalism and Political Science (pre-law emphasis). On campus, Abigail is actively involved in various organizations, including Chi Omega, the Public Relations Student Society of America, Matchbook Marketing, and Phi Alpha Delta. She currently works as a Digital Producer at KOMU 8 News and a Strategic Communications Intern for University of Missouri Athletics. After completing her undergraduate studies, she plans to first pursue a career in sports journalism before attending law school. In her free time, Abigail enjoys going to music festivals, hiking, reading, cooking vegetarian meals, and volunteering at the Smithsonian.

Kathryn Eisler is an MU junior majoring in Political Science and Constitutional Democracy, with
minors in Spanish, Latin American Studies, and History. On campus, Kathryn serves as the co-chair for a student recruitment organization that works closely with the Mizzou Office of Admissions and is a member of Alpha Delta Pi. When not studying or working, Kathryn enjoys spending time in nature, listening to music, and hanging out with friends, and after graduation, hopes to pursue a career in international relations and foreign policy.

Associate Professor, Department of Women’s & Gender Studies, Director, MU Center for the Humanities, elmanj@missouri.edu
Julie Passanante Elman is an associate professor of women’s and gender studies. She is also the founding director of the Center for the Humanities and the B.A. program in health humanities. Elman is the author of Chronic Youth: Disability, Sexuality, and U.S. Media Cultures of Rehabilitation (NYU Press, 2014), and her articles have appeared in a variety of peer-reviewed journals. She is currently working on a second monograph, Capacity Feminism and Its Discontents. Her teaching excellence and commitment to community-building have been recognized with several university awards, including the Provost’s Outstanding Junior Faculty Teaching Award, the Maxine Christopher Shutz Award and Lecture for Distinguished Teaching, and the Lee Henson Memorial Access Mizzou Award.

Professor, Truman School of Government & Public Affairs, endersby@missouri.edu
James Endersby (Professor) has been with the Department of Political Science since 1991. He received his Ph.D. in 1990 from the University of Texas and specializes in American politics and government, political behavior (voting and elections), formal political theory, and research methods. Endersby served as the director of Canadian Studies at the University of Missouri and was past president of the Southwestern Political Science Association (2015-2016) and the Midwest Association for Canadian Studies (2007-2009).

R.B. Price and Isabelle Wade & Paul C. Lyda Professor Emeritus, MU School of Law, esbeckc@missouri.edu
Carl H. Esbeck joined the faculty of the University of Missouri School of Law in 1981 and currently serves as the R.B. Price Professor Emeritus and Isabelle Wade & Paul C. Lyda Professor of Law Emeritus. He received his Juris Doctor magna cum laude in 1974 from Cornell University, where he was on the board of editors of the Cornell Law Review. Prof. Esbeck held a judicial clerkship with the Honorable Howard C. Bratton, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in New Mexico, and, from 1975-81, he practiced law in the Albuquerque firm of Rodey, Dickason, Sloan, Akin & Robb, where he was an equity partner when he left. Prof. Esbeck has published widely in the area of religious liberty and church-state relations, and he is recognized as the progenitor of “charitable choice,” an integral part of the 1996 Federal Welfare Reform Act, and later applied to all federal social-service grant programs via the faith-based initiative under Presidents Biden, Obama, and Bush. In addition, he has taken the lead in recognizing that the modern U.S. Supreme Court has applied the Establishment Clause not as a personal right, but as a structural limit on the government’s authority in explicitly religious matters. While on leave from 1999 to 2002, Prof. Esbeck directed the Center for Law & Religious Freedom (CLRF) at the Christian Legal Society and then served as Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. While directing the CLRF, he was a central part of the congressional advocacy behind the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA). While at the Department of Justice, one of his duties was to direct a task force to remove barriers to the equal-treatment of faith-based organizations applying for social-service grants. Prof. Esbeck’s most recent book is Disestablishment and Religious Dissent: Disestablishment in the New American States, 1776-1833, published by University of Missouri Press in 2019 as part of the Kinder Institute’s Studies in Constitutional Democracy series. At MU, he taught courses on Civil Procedure, Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations, Federal Civil Rights Litigation, and Constitutional Law.

Scholar (2021), Certificate in American Constitutional Democracy
Olivia Evans was raised in the bourbon and bluegrass state, in Louisville, KY. At Mizzou, Olivia studied Journalism, Political Science, Constitutional Democracy, and Spanish. She also was an athlete on Mizzou’s Track and Field Team where she threw hammer and weight for four years. The summer before senior year, Olivia interned for Forbes as part of the Kinder Scholars Program, and after graduating from Mizzou, she moved back to Louisville where she began working for the USA Today Network covering business and the overlap of policy and the business world in Kentucky.

Maeve Ewing is a PPE graduate from the University of Oxford, coming to Mizzou for the MA in Atlantic History and Politics after receiving a Kinder Fellowship. She lives in Manchester in the United Kingdom, a place well-known for its polarized football, incredible music scene, and gritty aesthetics.

She is incredibly interested in politics, especially social politics surrounding the welfare state and the history of socialism and communism around the world. Some of her key academic interests are International Relations, Political Sociology, Politics in Post-Soviet Russia and China, Ethics and Feminist Philosophy. She also has many hobbies that she enjoys in her spare time, including playing as a second row in women’s rugby, a keen interest in photography, and a love for singing and music.

Kinder Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in Political History, lauren.feldman@missouri.edu
Lauren Feldman is a historian and postdoctoral fellow at the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri. Her work centers on intersectional histories of intimacy, and investigating the broad intellectual question about how norms surrounding relationships in the U.S. have been created and reproduced over time. She is particularly committed to demonstrating how matters surrounding intimacy shed new light on conventional “big-picture” questions of U.S. history and historiography.

Feldman’s book project focuses on the contingent process by which marriage and state became intertwined in the U.S., from the period of the American Revolution to the Civil War. Through an examination of debates over early American marriage laws, she historicizes marriage’s centrality to the formation of United States governance, as well as the implications thereof surrounding the creation and maintenance of a U.S. privatized social structure. As part of this project, she also works on the history of slave marriage in the United States.

Feldman’s work has been supported by multiple institutions, including the American Historical Association, American Society for Legal History, and New-York Historical Society, and has been published in the journal Law and History Review. She was previously a predoctoral fellow in the history of the Civil War era at Penn State’s Richards Center for academic year 2022-2023. From 2021-2024, she served as the project coordinator of JHU Hard Histories, a public history initiative examining the histories of racism and discrimination at Johns Hopkins University. Feldman received her PhD in history from JHU in 2023, and an AB in history from Harvard College in 2013.

Kinder Professor of British History, Professor of History, r.fletcher@missouri.edu
Rob Fletcher is Kinder Professor of British History and Professor of History at the University of Missouri. His work explores the history of Britain and its empire in the modern period, and the interplay of national, transnational, and global histories. He grew up in Colchester, England, and read Modern History at Magdalen College, University of Oxford. He lived in Tokushima, Japan, before returning to Oxford to complete his doctoral studies. He has previously held positions as the Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Global History at Oxford, Lecturer in Imperial and Global History at the University of Exeter, and Reader in the History of Britain and Empire at the University of Warwick.

Professor Fletcher’s research on the history of Britain’s empire is wide-ranging, and has appeared in Past and Present, The English Historical Review, Journal of Historical Geography, and Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. He is the author of British Imperialism and ‘The Tribal Question’: Desert Administration and Nomadic Societies in the Middle East, 1919-1936 (Oxford University Press, 2015), which told the story of what happened when the British empire and Bedouin communities met on the desert frontiers between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. His second book, The Ghost of Namamugi (Amsterdam University Press, 2019) provided an examination of mercantile ambition and imperial power in Shanghai and Yokohama in the mid-nineteenth century.

Professor Fletcher has been the Principal Investigator on a number of research projects supported by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, including a Science in Culture award on the international campaign against the desert locust in the twentieth century. In conducting his research, he has collaborated with a number of museums and public organisations in the UK, Europe, and Australia. His current book project examines Britain’s historic relationship with the world’s desert environments.

Haskell Monroe Graduate Fellow in Civil War Era History, bgfloyd@mail.missouri.edu
Brendon Floyd is a graduate research fellow at the Kinder Institute and holds a B.A. in History and an M.Ed. in Secondary Education from Johnson State College, as well as an M.A. in History from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. As a Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of Missouri, he works under the supervision of Jay Sexton. His research interests are Irish radicalism during the Age of Revolution, with particular attention to the United Irishmen, their involvement in the maritime world and the West Indies, and their role in the War of 1812.

Mya Franklin is a junior from St. Louis, MO, studying Political Science and Constitutional Democracy, with a minor in Spanish. After her undergrad career, she hopes to obtain her Master’s in History and then pursue a law degree. On campus, she is involved with Kinder Institute’s Society of Fellows, the Little Sisters of the Gold Rose service sorority, the Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention Center, and the Courageous Leadership Series through the Office of Institutional Equity and Inclusion. In her free time, she enjoys binging sit-coms (The Office, currently), hanging out with her friends, and spending time outdoors.

Fellow (2014-2015), Scholar (2015)
Samantha graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Mizzou with degrees in English and Political Science. After graduating, she completed her Master’s in International Conflict Prevention as a Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar at Durham University in the United Kingdom and her law degree at the University of Michigan Law School. She now lives in Washington, D.C., where she specializes in international trade law and advocates for human trafficking survivors.

Assistant Teaching Professor (Kinder Institute, Honors College, Truman School), mfghp@missouri.edu
Originally from Kirkwood, MO, Matthew Frierdich received his B.A. in History and Government from Drury University, his M.Div from Vanderbilt Divinity School, and his Ph.D. in Political Theory from University of Virginia. Prior to joining the Mizzou faculty as an Assistant Teaching Professor, jointly appointed in the Honors College, Kinder Institute, and Truman School of Government and Public Affairs, he served as a board-certified chaplain at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville. At the Honors College and Kinder Institute, he co-coordinates the new Revolutions and Constitutions social science sequence. His dissertation at UVA, entitled “Turning Rubble and Memory into Seeds: Visions of Democracy in Monument Removal,” focuses on how activism around public memorializations of race and racialized violence offer possibilities and pitfalls for the work of social transformation. As memory becomes a popular political vernacular for articulating justice in the U.S. and elsewhere, the project considers how memory activism raises questions about what democratic engagement must become to cultivate new ways of being human.

To stay grounded in an otherwise chaotic world, Dr. Frierdich loves to tend to his garden, mostly vegetables and a few flowers. He also stays invested in Marvel comics, horror films, and anywhere that sells used books. His partner Emily, son Ezra, and cats Zelda and Tish fill up his cup every day.

Scholar (2018), Fellow (2018-19), Study at Oxford (2019)
Originally from Boonville, Missouri, Bryce Fuemmeler graduated with degrees in Economics and History from Mizzou in 2020. Following graduation, he received an M.Sc. in Economic and Social History from the University of Oxford, where he studied postwar England’s welfare state and America’s Great Society programs. He currently heads the research team for Harvard’s Leadership & Happiness Laboratory, founded by Dr. Arthur Brooks.

Maggie Funston is a junior from Festus, Missouri, studying Political Science and Constitutional Democracy. Maggie is a part of several organizations on Mizzou’s campus, serving as the co-director of student government freshman programming (First Year Council); a senator in the Missouri Students Association; president of Mizzou Model United Nations; and an attorney and witness for Mizzou Mock Trial. Outside of her academic commitments, Maggie also serves as a legislative intern with State Senator Angela Walton Mosley in Missouri’s State Senate. While all this keeps her quite busy, Maggie enjoys taking time to watch movies (particularly those starring Matt Damon), listen to music (particularly that of Frank Sinatra), and bake desserts with her dad. After completing her undergraduate studies, Maggie will attend law school to study criminal law and practice as a prosecuting attorney before moving into the world of politics to serve the communities around her.

M.A. in Atlantic History & Politics (2022-2023)
Hunter Gappmayer was born and raised in Bozeman, Montana, and after a brief time studying I.T. Business and playing football at Montana Tech University, transferred to Brigham Young University where he graduated with a B.A. in History Teaching. Following his time at BYU, Hunter participated in the Kinder Institute’s M.A. program in Atlantic History & Politics. Since graduating from Mizzou, Hunter has moved to Utah, where he has assisted in the Utah Prison Education Project and currently teaches U.S. history and psychology at Lehi High School.

Kinder Institute Distinguished Faculty Fellow, argc5f@missouri.edu
Alan Gibson is Professor of Political Science at California State University, Chico. His focus is American political thought, especially that of the American founding. Gibson has held fellowships from the International Center for Jefferson Studies in Charlottesville, Virginia, the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has published articles in, among other journals, American Political Thought, Polity, History of Political Thought, and The Review of Politics. Gibson is the author of two books on the historiography of the American founding, both published by University Press of Kansas, and he is currently working on a study of the political thought of James Madison, tentatively titled James Madison and the Creation of an Impartial Republic. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame.

Leah Glasser will graduate in December 2022 from the Missouri School of Journalism, where she is working toward a degree in Strategic Communication, with minors in Political Science and Constitutional Democracy. After graduation, Leah hopes to pursue her interests in sustainable agriculture and social justice through a career in communications for a task force or nonprofit. Previously, Leah worked as a field organizer on the 2020 Minnesota Democratic Coordinated Campaign and this past summer, got some hands-on experience working on her parent’s organic garlic farm. Currently, she is working on an essay for Kinder’s Journal on Constitutional Democracy as part of the Society of Fellows program. Leah hails from White Salmon, Washington and enjoys swimming, hiking, skiing, and reading in her free time.

Kinder Institute Senior Fellow, lawrence.goldman@spc.ox.ac.uk
Lawrence Goldman was born in London and graduated in History from the University of Cambridge (Jesus College). He studied American History at Yale as a Harkness Fellow and returned to Britain to do his doctoral work at Cambridge’s Trinity College, focusing on the history of social science in the Victorian period. He spent 29 years as a university lecturer at the University of Oxford where he was Fellow and Tutor in History at St. Peter’s College and where he taught modern British and American History. He was then Director of the Institute of Historical Research in the University of London. From 2004-2014 he was the Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a compendium of the most significant figures throughout British history and the longest work in the history of the English language, and he has authored books on Victorian social science, the history of workers’ education in Britain, and the life of political thinker and historian R.H. Tawney, among other topics. He most recently edited, Welfare and Social Policy in Britain Since 1870: Essays in Honour of Jose Harris. He is a Senior Research Fellow of St. Peter’s College and joins the Kinder Institute as a Senior Fellow in the new M.A. program in Atlantic History and Politics.

Carly Gordon is a junior from St. Charles, Missouri, pursuing majors in Political Science, Constitutional Democracy, and International Studies, with an emphasis in Latin American Studies, as well as a minor in Spanish. On campus, Carly served as Vice President of Mizzou Model United Nations and was a 2023-24 Kinder Fellow. She also works as a student assistant at the Office of Accessibility and ADA, addressing access barriers on campus and ensuring that workplace accommodations meet the needs of staff and faculty. After graduating, Carly hopes to utilize these skills in a career in foreign service, advocating for human rights on a global stage. When not studying or working, she enjoys eating vegan food and traveling with friends.

Scholar (2015), Fellow (2015-16)
Maddie McMillian Green is a Principal at Husch Blackwell Strategies in Missouri. She earned her law degree from the University of Missouri School of Law and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Political Science from the University of Missouri. She recently served as Deputy Attorney General for Policy in the Missouri Attorney General’s Office. Previously, she spent nearly three years in the Missouri Governor’s Office, first as chief of staff to the First Lady and then as manager of strategic initiatives and special assistant to the state’s Chief Operating Officer. Raised in Farmington, MO, she and her husband split their time between St. Louis and Jefferson City.

Richard Gregory graduated from the University of Warwick with a BA in History and Politics with an integrated year studying abroad at McMaster University, Canada. His prime areas of academic interest include maritime history, American foreign policy, and Atlantic trade and economic history. His undergraduate dissertation explored British trade in the Baltic Sea, using the Sound Toll Registers Online database to stress the Baltic’s key role in Britain’s success in the early modern period.

Richard worked as a heritage assistant at the Lord Leycester Hospital Museum and as a research assistant in the transcription and publishing of Sir William Norris’ diaries (Ambassador to the Mogul Emperor Aurangzeb, 1699-1702). Among his many areas of historical interest, Richard is keen to look further into the networks of exchange, cooperation, and conflict which have characterized the history of the Atlantic Basin. After being introduced to North American Indigenous history, specifically the Mississauga and Haudenosaunee nations on whose land McMaster is built, he is looking forward to expanding his knowledge through studying different Indigenous cultures and the history of first contacts.

Outside of his studies, Richard enjoys spending time outdoors, travelling, and supporting Coventry City FC!

Alex Harms is an MU senior pursuing a bachelor’s in Business Administration, with an emphasis in Management, as well as a minor in Constitutional Democracy. He is active both on and off campus: in the local community as a volunteer Peacebuilder Intern for Metro Rotary Club; as a student employee for the Trulaske College of Business, where he gives a lecture on AI use for professional and personal development once a week; and as a former treasurer and secretary for the Mizzou Marketing Club. His work in both the Marketing Club and Metro Rotary Club have included the Afghan Initiative, which aims at getting business opportunities for Afghan refugee women. Passionate about the issues refugees face and American foreign policy shortcomings abroad, Alex will point anyone interested to The Afghanistan Project Podcast and the work that non-profits and the veteran community have done to help secure the American Dream for our allies. Prior to coming to college, Alex was in the Army Infantry for three years. His long-term goals include law school and international affairs. He is currently training to run the Kansas City Marathon and loves to read and watch movies in his free time.

Ashton Hawkins is an MU junior from Kansas City, majoring in Sociology with a minor in Criminology/Criminal Justice. A member of Mizzou’s Mock Trial Association, Ashton hopes to attend law school after graduating. In her free time, she enjoys reading and painting.

Nicklas Herbert is a sophomore honors student from King City, MO, majoring in Political Science (pre-law emphasis), with minors in Criminology and Constitutional Democracy. Nicklas is involved on campus with Phi Alpha Delta as Brotherhood and Service Chair, Best Buddies as Treasurer, and Moot Court as Director of Public Relations. In his free time, Nicklas likes to bake/cook, play video games with his sister, and walk around campus. Nicklas is passionate about prison and law enforcement reform, and he hopes to attend law school after finishing at Mizzou to pursue a career as a criminal lawyer.

Kinder Institute Assistant Teaching Professor of Constitutional Democracy, Assistant Teaching Professor of Political Science, hernandezrk@missouri.edu
Rodolfo (Rudy) Hernandez is a Kinder Institute Assistant Teaching Professor of Constitutional Democracy and Assistant Teaching Professor of Political Science. His research focuses on political theory and American political development, and his dissertation considers the political economy of Abraham Lincoln’s thought, especially as it relates to the principle of equality expressed by the Declaration of Independence. Recently his work has appeared in The Political Science Reviewer.  He frequently teaches American Government, American Political Thought, and Race and the American Story. Dr. Hernandez received his Ph.D. in Political Theory from Louisiana State University (2017) and his B.A. from St. John’s College (Annapolis, 1999). He previously taught as a Visiting Instructor at Louisiana Tech University and as a Senior Lecturer at Texas State University, and he served from 2018-20 as a Kinder Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Thought & Constitutionalism. He also has prior government experience, including having been in AmeriCorps, having worked as a tax examiner in the U.S. Treasury Department, and eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve.

Charles Hodge II is a senior from Dacula, GA, majoring in Political Science (Pre-Law emphasis) with a minor in American Constitutional Democracy. Charles is Treasurer of the Black Pre-Law Student Association (BPLSA) and a general member of Mizzou Model United Nations (MIZMUN). Charles plans to go to law school after graduating, and when not studying or working, likes listening to music artists like Fiona Apple and her album “When the Pawn…”

Mark Hood is a sophomore from Kansas City, MO, majoring in Business Administration, with an emphasis in Finance, and minoring in Pre-Law. On campus he’s involved with the Black Business Association, in addition to serving as a Residential Advisor and a Peer-Learning Assistant. He’s interested in photography and 3D house modeling and would ultimately like to use real estate law to develop under-privileged and underserved communities.

Bill Horner is Director of Undergraduate Studies and Teaching Professor in the Department of Political Science. He studied Radio, Television, and Film as an undergraduate at Northwestern University before completing graduate degrees in Political Science at Arizona State University (M.A.) and the University of Texas at Austin (Ph.D.). He is the author of Showdown in the Show-Me State (2005) and Ohio’s Kingmaker: Mark Hanna, Man and Myth (2010), and Saturday Night Live and the 1976 Presidential Election (2018), with MU Chair of Theatre Heather Carver. In addition, he is the co-author, with MU Professor of Political Science James Endersby, of Lloyd Gaines and the Fight to End Segregation, the first book published on the Kinder Institute’s Studies in Constitutional Democracy series with University of Missouri Press. Since arriving at the University of Missouri, Professor Horner has twice been awarded the Purple Chalk Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education and has also received the prestigious William T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence and the Chancellor’s Excellence Award for Lifetime Achievement in Advising for his work with Pi Sigma Alpha, the Political Science Department’s honors organization.

Fellow (2014-2015), Scholar (2015)
Camille is the Associate Director of Federal Affairs for the University of Pennsylvania. In this role, she represents Penn in Washington, D.C., developing the university’s strategy related to federal policy, regulations, and funding, and helping manage the university’s relationship with the federal government. Before joining Penn, she was the Assistant Director for Government Relations at the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) and a Federal Relations Assistant for the University of Missouri System. She is originally from Ashland, Missouri, and studied Political Science at Mizzou.

From Little Rock, Arkansas, William Hout graduated from the University of Missouri with Honors in Spring 2024, earning a BA in History and Religious Studies.

In the MA program, he hopes to study the political economy of pre-WWI Europe and the consequent formation of military alliances. After completing the degree, William plans to pursue a PhD in History with a focus on the development of 20th century imperialism and eventually start a career in academia.

Zeb Howell is an MU junior from the rural town of Summersville, MO, pursing degrees in Political Science and Public Administration and Policy. He aspires to have a career in public policy or non-profit management where he can help give back to others. On campus, Zeb is a member of MU Tour Team and has held multiple roles in the Missouri Students Association, and in his free time, he enjoys playing basketball and spending time back home in the Ozarks.

A senior at Mizzou, Luke Hruby is a double major in Political Science and Constitutional Democracy. He is involved in the Missouri Students Association, where he serves as an Academic Senator for the College of Arts and Science and sits on the Internal Affairs Committee to help delegate funding to student organizations across campus. He also serves as a Justice for the Residence Halls Association, where he works to improve student life and well-being in the dorms. Outside of his involvement on campus, Luke enjoys cheering on Mizzou athletics and is a huge fan of Chicago sports and Formula 1 racing.

Scout Hudson, a sophomore from St. Peters, MO, is studying Journalism and Constitutional Democracy, with minors in Political Science and History. She is currently the editor-in-chief of MU’s student newspaper, The Maneater, volunteers at Tiger Pantry, and is a member of MU’s student radio station, KCOU 88.1 FM. She hopes to pursue investigative journalism and is considering attending law school post-graduation. In her free time, she enjoys reading, collecting vinyl, and spending time with friends.

Carin Huffman Grinch holds degrees in Political Science and History from Mizzou. Prior to joining the Kinder Institute in October 2023, Carin spent 22 years in advancement at Mizzou. She began her career with the Mizzou Alumni Association, where she managed programs including the Griffiths Leadership Society for Women, Alumni Association Student Board, and Tiger Tailgates. For the past 10 years, Carin directed the university’s donor relations team where she oversaw a team that led programs and events designed to engage and connect donors with the impact of their philanthropy.

Kinder Institute Assistant Professor of Constitutional Democracy, Assistant Professor of Political Science, jcikuta@missouri.edu
Jennie Ikuta is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Truman School of Government & Public Affairs and an Assistant Professor of Constitutional Democracy at the Kinder Institute. Born in San Diego and raised in Yokohama, Japan, she returned to the United States as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago (2007) and completed her Ph.D. in political theory at Brown University (2014).

As a political theorist, Ikuta’s research interests center on the role of moral psychology in politics, especially in 19th- and 20th-century political thought. Her first book, Contesting Conformity: Democracy and the Paradox of Political Belonging (Oxford University Press, 2020) examines the thought of Tocqueville, Mill, and Nietzsche in order to investigate the notion of nonconformity and its relationship to modern democracy. Articles drawn from this project have been published in Constellations (2017) and Philosophy & Social Criticism (2015).

Since then, she has turned her attention to the kinds of motivations necessary for generating social change in contexts of historical injustice. This is the focus of her second book project, White Losses: Moral Psychology and the Demands of Racial Justice, which is under advance contract at Oxford University Press. This project employs the thought of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, and James Baldwin—in conjunction with analyses of popular forms of American liberalism and contemporary political theory—to illuminate the psychological transformations required by members of historically dominant groups for the sake of a more egalitarian society. Articles drawn from this project have been published in The Journal of Politics (2021) and Polity (2022); another is forthcoming in Political Theory.

Katelyn Irvin is a senior from O’Fallon, Missouri, studying Constitutional Democracy with a minor in History. Katelyn served as a research assistant for the Santa Fe Trail team through the ASH Scholars Program during 2023-24, while also pursuing independent research. In her free time, she enjoys substitute teaching, coaching girls’ youth volleyball, and exploring the local coffee scene.

Kinder Institute Graduate Fellow in Political Science, ajm7b@missouri.edu
Antony Jackson is currently a PhD student of Political Science in the Truman School of Government and Public Affairs and a graduate fellow at the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy. He received his MA in Atlantic History and Politics from the University of Missouri and his BA in Political Science from Utah Valley University. He is interested in American political development and the relationship between institutions and ideas, with particular emphasis on observing the evolution of American state constitutions.

Raised in Lakeville, MN, Kenneth Johnson received a BA in Political Science from Mizzou, in addition to a Minor in Business and Certificates in Sales and Customer Development and Multicultural Studies. For the past seven years, Kenneth has worked for Johnson Brothers Liquor Company, based in St. Paul, Minnesota, and he has been a manager for the past 5 years. Before working at Johnson Brothers, he was a team lead for the 2014 Al Franken for Senate campaign. Kenneth currently resides in a suburb of Minneapolis, MN.

Claire Johnson is a junior from Republic, Missouri, majoring in Constitutional Democracy and minoring in History, Political Science, Law, and Criminal Justice. On campus, she is involved with the Phi Alpha Delta Pre-Law Fraternity and she currently works at the Mizzou Rec. After completing her undergraduate studies, she hopes to attend law school and work in restorative justice prosecution. In her free time, she enjoys studying film, expanding her record collection, and exploring Columbia’s various hiking trails.

A senior from Little Rock, Arkansas, Emily Jones is double-majoring in Political Science, with a Pre-Law emphasis, and Interdisciplinary Studies, with an emphasis in Women’s and Gender Studies, while also pursuing a minor in American Constitutional Democracy and a certificate in Multicultural Studies. After graduating, she plans on going to law school to pursue a career as a human rights lawyer, focusing on cases that deal with social justice issues and civil rights. On campus, Emily is the Outreach Coordinator for Mizzou Democrats and is also one of the founding Youth Ambassadors for the Missouri Chapter of the National Women’s Political Caucus. An organization whose mission is to elect female policymakers who are passionate about women’s issues, Emily’s role as a Youth Ambassador involves working to increase the demographic of young voters, specifically 18–25-year-olds, and supporting the election of pro-choice female candidates. In her free time, Emily enjoys reading, hanging out with friends, and completing puzzles.

Kinder Institute Director of Undergraduate Studies, kanetc@missouri.edu
Raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Thomas Kane earned a B.A. in English from Yale University, an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Missouri, where he wrote a critical dissertation on representations of democratic order in the American long poem and a creative dissertation on fractured modes of communication in the digital age. His current research examines echoes of Walt Whitman in 20th-century American poetry, with particular attention to questions of land and agency. While at the University of Pittsburgh, he edited and co-translated Tomaz Salamun’s 2009 collection of poems There’s the Hand and There’s the Arid Chair (Counterpath Press). Thomas served as Assistant Coordinator of Scholarly Programs during the Kinder Institute’s first year before taking on his current responsibilities.

Associate Professor, Department of History, karthasi@missouri.edu
Ilyana Karthas joined the MU history faculty after teaching for three years at McGill University in both the History Department and Women’s Studies Program. She teaches courses in Modern European intellectual and cultural history, specializing in 19th- and 20th- century France. Her research interests focus on the development of national identity, modern aesthetics, and ideologies of gender. Professor Karthas also teaches courses as part of the Gender Concentration, and she is an Affiliate Faculty member of both the Women’s and Gender Studies Department and the Kinder Institute. In 2010-2011, she served as the first Scholar’s Chair offered by the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies in which she awarded a research stipend, delivered a public lecture, and taught a seminar in the WGST Department. In 2013, she was awarded the Maxine Christopher Shutz Award for Distinguished Teaching & Lecture and, in 2020, she was awarded the Alumnae Anniversary Award for Excellence in Teaching. She has been invited to participate in public lectures at the National WWI Museum in Kansas City.

Director and Professor, Truman School of Government & Public Affairs, keiserl@missouri.edu
Dr. Lael Keiser is professor and director of the Harry S. Truman School of Government and Public Affairs. Her research and teaching focuses on the policy implementation and the administration of public programs. She serves on the editorial boards of Public Administration Review and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. Keiser received the Midwest Political Science Association’s Herbert Simon Award for significant contribution to the study of bureaucracy and the American Society for Public Administration’s Rita Mae Kelly Award for distinguished research on women’s issues. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Public Administration and an elected member of the Governing Board for the Public Management Research Association.

She has current research projects on representative bureaucracy, the automation of public service delivery, administrative burden, and policy implementation among street-level bureaucrats.

Scholar (2017), Fellow (2018-19)
Jane was born and raised in Springfield, Missouri, and graduated in 2019 with a Bachelor’s in Public Health from Mizzou. Following graduation, she took a gap year to continue her research on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and scribe at the Missouri Orthopedic Institute (MOI). In Fall 2020, she began medical school at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Richard D. Kinder is Executive Chairman of Kinder Morgan, Inc., the largest energy infrastructure company in America, which he co-founded in February 1997. Under his leadership, Kinder Morgan has grown from a small company with 175 employees to a corporation with almost 12,000 employees. He receives a salary of $1 a year and owns approximately 11 percent of Kinder Morgan. Mr. Kinder is a past recipient of Morningstar’s CEO of the Year award.

Kinder Morgan owns an interest in or operates 84,000 miles of pipelines and approximately 165 terminals. The company’s pipelines transport primarily natural gas, refined petroleum products, CO2, and crude oil, and its terminals store, transfer, and handle such products as gasoline, ethanol, coal, petroleum coke, and steel.

Mr. Kinder received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Missouri and served in Vietnam as a Captain in the U.S. Army. He has served on numerous corporate and non-profit boards and is a life trustee and current Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. He is also chairman of the Kinder Foundation.

Associate Professor, Truman School of Government & Public Affairs, kisidab@missouri.edu
Brian Kisida is an Assistant Professor in the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri who focuses on education policy, experimental design, and causal inference. The dominant theme of his research focuses on identifying effective educational options and experiences for at-risk students that can close achievement gaps, experience gaps, and attainment gaps. His research has examined the broad educational benefits of school partnerships with cultural institutions and community arts organizations, teacher diversity, school integration, and urban school choice. His academic publications include articles in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Sociology of Education, Educational Researcher, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, Economics of Education Review, and Policy Studies Journal. He has also co-authored three congressionally mandated experimental evaluation reports for the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. His work has been cited in congressional testimony before the U.S. House and Senate, and it has appeared in numerous media outlets, including The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN.

Scholar (2017)
Nick studied Political Science and History at MU where he was involved with the Civic Leaders Internship Program, Missouri Students Association, Deaton Institute for University Leadership in International Development, Associated Students for the University of Missouri, and Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honors Society, in addition to the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy. Since graduating, he has worked for the Columbia (MO) Chamber of Commerce and the Missouri Department of Economic Development. Nick devotes his personal time to serving on the Board of Directors for the Boys & Girls Club of Columbia and the MU Extension Council of Boone County as well as with The Food Bank of Central & Northeast Missouri as a volunteer.

Wall Chair in Corporate Law and Governance, Professor of Law, MU School of Law, lambertt@missouri.edu
Thomas A. Lambert is the Wall Chair in Corporate Law and Governance and Professor of Law. Prof. Lambert’s scholarship focuses on antitrust, corporate, and regulatory matters. He is the author of How to Regulate: A Guide for Policymakers (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017) and co-author of Antitrust Law: Interpretation and Implementation (5th ed., Foundation Press, 2013). He has also authored or co-authored numerous book chapters and more than 20 journal articles in such publications as the Antitrust Bulletin, the Boston College Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review, the Texas Law Review, and the Yale Journal on Regulation. He blogs regularly at Truth on the Market, a site focused on academic commentary on antitrust, business, and economic legal issues.

In 2017, Professor Lambert received the University of Missouri’s Kemper Faculty Fellowship (awarded annually to five professors throughout the university for exemplary teaching). He has also received the law school’s Blackwell Sanders Award for Teaching Excellence and the university-wide Gold Chalk Award for excellence in graduate teaching. He is a three-time winner of the University of Missouri Law School’s Shook Hardy & Bacon Excellence in Research Award, which is awarded annually for most outstanding faculty scholarship.

Before entering academia, Professor Lambert practiced law in the Chicago office of Sidley Austin and was a John M. Olin Fellow at Northwestern University School of Law and the Center for the Study of American Business (now the Murray Weidenbaum Center) at Washington University. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

James Langen is a sophomore from Columbia, MO, pursuing a double major in Music, as a clarinetist, and History, with an emphasis in public history. He is also pursuing a minor in Spanish. In the School of Music, he is also an employee, working as a cataloguing assistant in the Budds Center. Ultimately, he hopes to get a Master’s Degree in Library Science or Archival Studies and do work in the corresponding area. Outside of school, he spends most of his time re-reading Jane Austen novels, cooking elaborate meals, and practicing Sisyphean piano pieces.

Clyde Lear is the retired Chairman and CEO of Learfield Communications Inc., a company he started in 1972 as an outgrowth of his Master’s project at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. The company, which entered the college sports business in 1975, recently merged with IMG College and is now called Learfield/IMG College.

Learfield/IMG College is the preeminent leader in the collegiate sports marketing arena and is the exclusive provider of marketing services for athletic departments at 220 major universities. The Plano, TX-based company has offices in 250 cities. In addition, Learfield/IMG College has branched out into other affiliated businesses, including licensing, ticket sales and systems, LED displays and scoreboards, collegiate athletic websites, and digital media and brand marketing. The company also operates the nation’s largest agricultural radio network, the Brownfield Network, and four state news networks. Today, Learfield/IMG College has roughly 2,500 employees.

Lear received a Master’s degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Missouri in 1968 and an AB degree in 1966 from Central Methodist University (CMU) in Fayette, Missouri. He attended high school in Jefferson City, where he was born in 1944.

Lear is a leader in higher education. For 13 years, he served on the Board of Curators of CMU and for five years was its Chair. He was named a member of the 1992 Class of Distinguished Alumni from the University of Missouri and was a past recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award, both distinctions in acknowledgment of his significant contribution to media in America. He has also been a leader in the Missouri Governor’s Student Leadership Forum since its inception 32 years ago; was President of Jefferson City’s Memorial Community Hospital; is an Eagle Scout and a member of the Board of Central Bank and the National Board for Young Life; and was enshrined into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.

Clyde and his wife of 53 years, Sue, have three grown children and six grandchildren.

One of his great loves is mentoring. He and Sue use their resources to develop outstanding executives and leaders, and he gives significant time to helping college age—and post-college age—men and women grow spiritually, personally, and professionally.

Bobby Lee is a senior from Waterloo, Illinois, majoring in History and Constitutional Democracy, with minors in East Asian Studies and Political Science. He plans to pursue a doctoral degree in Modern Chinese and Taiwanese History after graduation and hopes to go into academia. He was involved in the Kinder Institute’s Society of Fellows and ASH Scholars Team during 2023-24, and is also a member of the MU Tour Team. In his free time, he enjoys watching soccer and basketball (Go Newcastle and Nuggets!) and playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Hailing from Kirkwood, MO, Jack Leonhardt-Smith graduated from the University of Missouri in 2024 with a Bachelor of Arts in History and minors in German and Political Science. His primary academic interest as an undergraduate focused on the history and economics of Germany and Great Britain and the interplay of the two nations.

Outside of his studies, Jack enjoys travelling, reading, immersing himself in sports statistics, and the occasional Lego set.

Mable Lewis is a junior at The University of Missouri from Columbia, Missouri. She studies Public Health with a Psychology minor, with goals of pursuing health policy in the future. She is heavily involved on campus with the Pre-MPH Scholars program, Public Health Club, School of Health Professions (SHP) Student Council, Little Sisters of the Gold Rose (LSGR), and Women of Color, Honor, and Ambition (WOCHA). Mable is also Flourish Scholarship recipient, and was recently one of 63 students nominated for the MU Award for Academic Distinction (AAD). Outside of school, Mable enjoys spending time with her new puppy, Cupid, trying different local coffee shops, and DIYing home décor. A fun fact is that Mable is first-generation Nigerian-American.

Dean, MU School of Law, littonp@missouri.edu
Paul Litton was named permanent dean of Mizzou Law in May 2023 after serving as interim dean since July 2022. He joined the Mizzou faculty in 2006. He received a JD and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied through the University’s Joint Program in Law and Philosophy, and was awarded the Lynn Lukens Moore Prize in Jurisprudence by the Law School. He was law clerk to Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz of the New Jersey Supreme Court, serving a second term as the Court’s death penalty law clerk. From 2004 to 2006, he was a fellow in the Department of Clinical Bioethics within the National Institutes of Health.

Dean Litton’s research primarily focuses on moral philosophy and criminal law theory, with a particular focus on the capacities required for agents to be fairly held morally and criminally responsible for their conduct. He also has published multiple papers in bioethics, with a focus on ethical issues for health care professionals outside the medical care context. His work appears in peer-reviewed journals across disciplines, as well as in traditional law reviews.

From 2010-12, Dean Litton co-chaired the Missouri Death Penalty Assessment Team, assembled by the American Bar Association to study and make recommendations regarding the laws and practices of Missouri’s capital system. The team included retired and active judges, former prosecutors and defense counsel, and academics with diverse views about the capital punishment. Its report, published in March 2012, can be found here.

Dean Litton has twice received the School of Law’s Shook Hardy & Bacon Award for Excellence in Research and has also been recognized for teaching, receiving the Gold Chalk Award from the University’s Graduate Professional Council and the Husch Blackwell Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching. Professor Litton teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Death Penalty Law, Jurisprudence, and Bioethics & Law.

From 2015 to 2022, Dean Litton served as Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at the School of Law. He also was Director of the Office of Academic Integrity within the Office of the Provost from 2017 to 2022.

Bailey Martin is a junior studying history and constitutional democracy. In addition to being involved with the Kinder Institute, Bailey serves the students of the UM System as Legislative Director of the Associated Students of the University of Missouri, advocating for legislation that would benefit students in Jefferson City. Bailey’s academic interests center around public history and making academia accessible and engaging to a wider public audience, a passion currently being exercised with two fellow History Department students via the campaign to save Read Hall alongside two of my fellow History Department students. Bailey hopes to pursue a master’s in history upon graduating from the University of Missouri in May of 2023.

Professor, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, mendezah@missouri.edu
Adriana Méndez Rodenas is Professor of Caribbean and Latin American Literatures in the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Trained in Romance Studies at Cornell University (Ph.D) and Duke University (M.A.), she was professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa and came to the University of Missouri to direct the Afro-Romance Institute (2017-2021). Professor Méndez Rodenas’ areas of research are transatlantic studies, Caribbean literature, and travel writing. Her books explore the connection between gender and nineteenth-century Spanish American history. Gender and Nationalism in Colonial Cuba: The Travels of Santa Cruz y Montalvo, Condesa de Merlin (1998) retrieves a pivotal figure in Cuban letters, followed by critical editions of Merlin’s Les esclaves dans les colonies espagnoles (2005) and Viaje a la Habana (2009). Transatlantic Travels to Nineteenth Century Latin America: European Women Pilgrims (2014) traces the rise of Spanish American nationalism as documented in women’s travels. Currently she is engaged in Transatlantic Sketches: Fredrika Bremer’s American Journey (1851-1853) and the Iconography of the Plantation, a book on a pioneering Swedish novelist and early feminist whose travels to the U.S. and Cuba during the ante-bellum era show a comparative view of plantation society. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Huntington Library, the Newberry Library, the Notre Dame Center for Advanced Studies, and the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

She serves on the editorial board of Karib-Nordic Journal for Caribbean Studies and Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana (IILI).

Email: mendezah@missouri.edu

Fellow (2017-2018), Scholar (2019), Certificate in American Constitutional Democracy, M.A. in Atlantic History & Politics (2020-2021)
Riley Messer was born and raised in a small town outside of Kansas City, Missouri, and studied Political Science at Mizzou. During her undergraduate career, she contributed to the fourth volume of the Kinder Institute’s Journal on Constitutional Democracy with an essay titled, “Defining Corruption in the Founding Era and the Modern Era.” Riley obtained an M.A. in Atlantic History and Politics from Mizzou in 2021, and after completing that, she started work as a researcher for a government accountability organization, where she uses FOIA and state public records requests to combat corruption and advance transparency.

Benjamin Miller is a senior Journalism student from Miami, Florida, concentrating in Reporting & Writing. He also works as a Registered Behavioral Technician at Atlas Autism Health. During his time at Mizzou, he’s written and reported for the Columbia Missourian, the Missouri Business Alert, and KOMU8. He hopes to obtain a master’s degree in behavioral science and become a Board Certified Behavioral Analyst after graduating. In his free time. he enjoys reading and playing guitar.

Professor and Chair, Department of Economics, milyoj@missouri.edu
Jeffrey Milyo is Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri and senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC. He earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University and served on the faculty of Tufts University and the University of Chicago before coming to MU in 2004. Professor Milyo teaches courses in political economics, law and economics, health economics, and the economics of discrimination. Professor Milyo’s research interests include American politics and public policy evaluation, and his recent work investigates the efficacy of campaign finance reforms, the effects of voter ID laws, disparities in policing and sentencing, and the causes and consequences of political corruption.

Ruth L. Hulston Professor of Law, Director, Michael A. Middleton Center for Race, Citizenship, and Justice, mitchellsd@missouri.edu
Professor S. David Mitchell is an interdisciplinary scholar, Director of the Michael A. Middleton Center for Race, Citizenship and Justice, and Ruth L. Hulston Professor of Law. He examines the criminal justice system using a sociological lens, specifically focusing on the collateral consequences of sentencing; ex-offender reentry and reintegration; and felon disenfranchisement. His other scholarship includes articles on zero-tolerance policies and the retroactive application of laws. He has served on numerous academic and public panels and been interviewed and quoted in a variety of news outlets.

He joined the University of Missouri School of Law faculty in 2006. Prior to joining the legal academy, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Andre M. Davis, formerly of the U.S. District Court, and as a Scholar in Residence in the Sociology Department at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is an affiliate faculty member of the MU Black Studies and the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy. He is also a member of the graduate faculty of the Sociology Department. He has served as the Chair of the University of Missouri System on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force and the University of Missouri Faculty Advisory Council for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

He is a member of the American Law Institute. He is a member of the Missouri State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, serving as Chair from 2016-2017, and has served as a Missouri Supreme Court Faculty Fellow. He has been recognized for his teaching and service as a recipient of the Gold Chalk Award; the Legion of Black Collegians Minority Faculty and Staff Appreciation Award; the 2014-2015 Lloyd L. Gaines Scholarship Banquet Honoree; the MU President’s Community Engagement Award; and the Missouri Lawyer’s Media Diversity and Inclusion Award. He was also recently inducted into the Rollins Society at the University of Missouri.

Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies, MU College of Arts & Science, monniern@missouri.edu
Nicole Monnier is the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies in the MU College of Arts & Science. She has taught a range of courses, from elementary Russian to graduate seminars, and many others in between. A common thread through all of her courses is the intersection of literature, culture, and history; increasingly, they are also geared to promote undergraduate and graduate student career readiness, so that students graduate with demonstrable skills in critical thinking and problem-solving; oral and written communications; and intercultural fluency.

Her primary area of specialization is mid-19th century Russian prose and criticism. In recent years, she’s shifted her attention to the late end of the 19th century and the works of Anton Chekhov in particular.

Sara has been involved in non-profit, civic, and political organizations for over fifty years, in seven different cities, including Kansas City and Washington, D.C., and four different states (MO, VA, FL, TX). She is the co-founder and past president of the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, which opened in September 2001, and currently serves on its board of directors. In addition to serving on the Advisory Board for the Kinder Institute, she is on the board of the Houston Grand Opera and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and is a Life Trustee and board member of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Sara is also a past board member and Life Trustee of the American Craft Council and has served on the boards of the Children’s Museum of Houston and Girls, Inc., among other organizations.

Sara and Bill Morgan have been married for 53 years and have two children, Catherine and Mike, who is married to Chrissi. They have three grandchildren, Emma (21), Will (18), and Kate (15). Sara is a graduate of the University of Missouri with a degree in Political Science.

Kinder Institute Associate Professor of Slavery and Atlantic World History, Associate Professor of History, mpnevius@missouri.edu
Marcus P. Nevius is Associate Professor of Slavery and Atlantic World History at the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, jointly appointed in the Department of History. He leads undergraduate and graduate seminars in topics of slavery, the Revolution, Confederation, and Early Republican periods in the early United States, and seminar topics in the history of the African diaspora in the Atlantic world.

Nevius is the author of City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763-1856 (University of Georgia Press, 2020). He has also published “New Histories of Marronage in the Anglo-Atlantic World and Early America,” in History Compass, and “Global Warfare, Conspiracy Scares, and Slave Revolts in a World of Fear,” Review of Books, in the William and Mary Quarterly. He has published book reviews in Slavery and Abolition, the Journal of African American History, the Journal of Southern History, and H-Net Civil War.

Nevius’ work has been supported by research fellowships granted by the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan; the Special Collections Research Center of the Earl Gregg Swem Library at the College of William and Mary; the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon; and the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond.

Nevius holds the Ph.D. in history from The Ohio State University, and the B.A. and M.A. in history from North Carolina Central University.

Grace Nielson is a junior from Joplin, Missouri, studying Social Work. With a passion to uplift survivors of domestic and sexual violence, Grace serves as a Residential Victim Advocate at True North, a Peer Educator with the RSVP center, and as a coordinator for MU’s chapter of It’s on Us. Currently, Grace works at a tour guide with MU’s Tour Team, serves as the undergraduate representative on the Status of Women’s Committee, and as a student assistant for the Congressional Research Institute for Social Work and Policy. After graduation, Grace plans to obtain her Master’s in Social Work with an emphasis in Public Policy and Administration in hopes to spend her career creating legislation that further advocates for survivors.

Isabelle Wade and Paul C. Lyda Professor of Law, MU School of Law, oliverir@missouri.edu
Professor Rigel Olvieri is a nationally recognized expert on fair housing law. Her scholarship focuses on housing discrimination, zoning and property rights, and sexual harassment. Her published work has appeared in a number of prestigious journals and been cited by state and federal courts. She is the co-author of a casebook, Sexual Harassment Law: Cases, History, and Practice, and co-editor of The Legal Guide to Affordable Housing Development. She has received numerous awards for public service.

Professor Oliveri teaches Constitutional Law, Fair Housing, Employment Discrimination, and Civil Procedure at the MU Law School, where she joined the faculty in 2004 and served as Associate Dean fir Research and Faculty Development from 2009 until 2015. She currently serves as Commissioner for the Columbia Housing Authority and on the Board of Mid-Missouri Legal Services.

Prior to joining the MU Law faculty, Professor Oliveri served as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice in the Civil Rights Division, Housing and Civil Enforcement Section. She litigated and tried a number of significant cases involving housing discrimination and sexual harassment and housing. In 2003, she was awarded a Special Commendation from the Attorney General for outstanding service.

Professor Oliveri obtained her BA from the University of Virginia, where she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa society and graduate with Highest Distinction. She obtained her JD from Stanford Law School, where she was Articles Editor for the Stanford Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. She clerked for the Honorable Stephanie K. Seymour, of the United States Court of Circuit Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, in Tulsa, OK.

Kinder Institute Chair of Early American History, Professor of History, pasleyj@missouri.edu
Jeffrey L. Pasley is Professor of History and Journalism, Frederick A. Middlebush Chair of History, and the Kinder Institute Chair in of Early American History. A graduate of Carleton College, he was a reporter-researcher for The New Republic and a speechwriter for Al Gore’s 1988 presidential campaign before entering academia. He completed his Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University and taught at Florida State University before coming to Missouri in 1999. His teaching and research focus on American political culture between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Professor Pasley is co-editor of Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic (2004) and author of “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (2001) and The First Presidential Contest: The Election of 1796 and the Beginnings of American Democracy (2013), the latter of which was named a finalist for the prestigious George Washington Book Prize.

Assistant Professor, Truman School of Government & Public Affairs, hannah.paul@missouri.edu
Dr. Hannah Paul joined the Truman School of Government and Public Affairs as an Assistant Professor in 2022. She studies comparative political behavior, the politics of immigration, and political representation. She has a special interest in time series and pooled times series analysis. Her current research interests focus on immigrant-origin political behavior, particularly refugees and asylum-seekers, as well as the effects of women’s representation. Her methodological research focuses on the implementation of models for pooled time series data in political science. Her work has been published in journals such as Political Science Research and Methods, Polity, Social Science Quarterly, and Legislative Studies Quarterly. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Colorado Boulder.

Greg Pekurney is from North Richland Hills, Texas. He graduated from the University of Missouri with a Bachelor of Arts in Constitutional Democracy and History and minors in Political Science and Latin American Studies.

Greg currently works as a graduate research assistant for the Kinder ASH Scholars program. In his free time, Greg likes to run, hike, watch sports, and build the occasional Lego set when available.

After completing his graduate studies, Greg plans on pursuing a career in public history, focusing on historical research and museum education.

Program and Multimedia Marketing Coordinator, pelleritoj@missouri.edu
Jordan Pellerito holds B.A.s in History and Political Science, an M.A. in History, and Ph.D. candidacy in History from the University of Missouri. In addition to programming and marketing, she is the instructor-of-record for the Kinder Institute Democracy Lab course and the Kinder Scholars D.C. Summer Program. Jordan is currently writing a dissertation on public history in the antebellum United States and completing a certificate in Digital Public Humanities from George Mason University. Her research interests include: popular representations of history, the intersection of social media and history, space/place, and museum theory.

Originally from St. Louis, Sarah graduated cum laude from the University of Missouri in May 2024 with her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science (pre-law emphasis), along with minors in Psychology and Constitutional Democracy. She also received a Certificate in Multicultural Studies.

During her time as an undergraduate, Sarah interned for President and Dr. Jill Biden in the Office of the First Lady at the White House, worked at the Council on Foreign Relations as the National Program and Outreach Intern, was involved with campaigning in local politics, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.

Sarah works as Missouri’s Regional Organizing Fellow for EC4EC and is passionate about reproductive justice, bodily autonomy, intersectional feminism, and LGBTQ+ rights.

Sam Peterson is a sophomore from Joplin, Missouri, studying Economics and Political Science. He is an exec member of MU club climbing, a mathematics tutor, an undergraduate economics researcher, and a Stamps Scholar. He is interested in the clever application of economic models, the history of politics and economy, and anything vaguely literary. Sam enjoys climbing really tall rocks, listening to cacophonous folk music, and reading whatever you suggest to him. He ultimately hopes to pursue a PhD and do meaningful civil service work on development economics or macro.

Aidan Pittman is a senior from Kansas City, Missouri, majoring in Journalism, with a minor in Constitutional Democracy. He currently reports for the Columbia Missourian, covering the 2024 session of the Missouri General Assembly, and has also been working with True/False Film Festival, serving as both a screening committee member and an assistant venue captain. On campus, Aidan is the Social Chair of the Missouri Debate Union and a member of Mizzou Model United Nations and was a 2023-24 undergraduate fellow at the Kinder Institute. After college, he hopes to become more heavily involved with film and/or politics to make a positive difference in these fields. In his free time, Aidan enjoys catching films at movie theaters, listening to Talking Heads and David Bowie, and going for walks when the weather cooperates.

Abby Plenge is a sophomore Constitutional Democracy major from Kahoka, Missouri. On campus, Abby is a member of Kappa Alpha Theta and a Kinder Institute Democracy Lab Fellow, and she was Miss Columbia and a top-8 Miss Missouri finalist in 2024. Abby is also the creator of the eye health advocacy initiative, Seeing is Believing; a member of the 20/20 Lions Club of Columbia; and a camera operator with KidSight Missouri. Outside of class, she enjoys playing the piano and working at The Grind making coffee.

Abby Ramirez is a senior from the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, majoring in Constitutional Democracy and Journalism, with minors in Political Science and History. She was involved with the Kinder Institute’s inaugural ASH Scholars Team in 2023-24, studying the evolution of women’s identity along the Santa Fe Trail. On campus, Abby is also a writer for Vox Magazine and Assistant Director of MU It’s on Us, a sexual assault prevention club. In her free time, Abby likes to ride her bike on the MKT Trail and rewatch her favorite TV shows, Gilmore Girls and Ted Lasso.

Emily Reed is a junior from Blue Springs, Missouri, double-majoring in Constitutional Democracy, with an emphasis in Law and Institutions, and Philosophy, with a certificate in Ethical Theory and Practice, and pursuing minors in History, Political Science, and Law. After graduation, Emily plans to obtain both a master’s degree and attend law school, with the ultimate career goal of working within the federal circuit court of appeals, ideally in a clerkship position. Emily is also involved in multiple organizations at Mizzou. She is Vice President of the Mizzou Mock Trial Association, Vice President of the Kinder Institute Undergraduate Society, and a member of Model United Nations, the Missouri Debate Union, and the Kinder Institute Society of Fellows. In her free time, she enjoys reading random new books and cooking/baking random new recipes.

Kinder Institute Assistant Professor of Constitutional Democracy, Assistant Professor of Political Science, eregier@missouri.edu
Emily F. Regier is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Truman School of Government & Public Affairs and an Assistant Professor of Constitutional Democracy at the Kinder Institute. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Emily focuses on American constitutionalism, public law, and legal theory. Her research connects prominent models of judicial decision making to different conceptions of democracy. Her work suggests that dominant accounts of judicial decision making in terms of judicial ideology and/or strategic action are too narrow. A fuller understanding of judicial decision making requires attention to the political suppositions of different legal frameworks, including, importantly, their understandings of and orientations toward democracy.

Emily is particularly interested in the development and legacy of the mid-twentieth century institutional-competence-based framework for legal decision making known as Legal Process Theory. She also has research interests in American pragmatism and feminist theory.

Kinder Institute Assistant Professor of Constitutional Democracy, Assistant Professor of History, reichardta@missouri.edu
Alec Zuercher Reichardt received a Ph.D. at Yale University and joined the Kinder Institute faculty in Fall 2018 as an Assistant Professor of Constitutional Democracy and an Assistant Professor of History, after spending a year as a junior visiting fellow at the Center for Humanities & Information at the Pennsylvania State University. Prof. Reichardt’s research revolves around 18th century European and Indigenous empires in North America and the Atlantic World, with a project currently in the works that examines the contest for the American Interior in the decades before the American Revolution and maps the development of communications infrastructure over the long Seven Years’ War. Prof. Reichardt’s next project will turn toward the spatial politics of native and Euro-American transportation landscapes, from the colonial period through the rise of the early American state. ​

Maddie Reiser is a second-year Stamps Scholar in the MU Honors College, majoring in Political Science and minoring in Business. Maddie is particularly interested in political conflict, international public law, and human rights law and intends to pursue a law degree in one of these areas after graduation. Maddie is originally from Johannesburg, South Africa, but grew up in Pleasant Plains, Illinois, and served as a Legislative Intern in the Illinois House of Representatives during Summer 2021. At Mizzou, Maddie is Secretary of the Missouri International Student Council, a member of Mizzou’s Tour Team, and an Undergraduate Research Fellow, and outside of academics, loves to read, listen to music, play volleyball, and explore the coffee shops in Columbia.

From outside St. Louis, Erin Reynolds is an MU senior majoring in Political Science, Constitutional Democracy, and Psychology, with a minor in History. She is captain of the MU Mock Trial Association and a member of the Phil Alpha Delta pre-law fraternity and plans to attend law school after her undergraduate career is done, with the goal of becoming a practicing attorney. In her free time, Erin enjoys working out and spending time with friends and family.

Dean, MU Honors College, rymphc@missouri.edu
Before accepting the position as Dean of the Honors College, Dr. Catherine Rymph served as both the chair of the History Department and the interim chair of the Religious Studies Department. A dedicated and celebrated teacher, Dr. Rymph has taught and lectured in the Honors College and directed many honors theses since her arrival on MU’s campus in 2000. In 2018, she was awarded the Gold Chalk Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching.

Dr. Rymph is the author of two books: Raising Government Children: A History of Foster Care and the American Welfare State (2017) and Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage to the Rise of the New Right (2006). Her research and teaching interests concern women and American politics, public policy, and child welfare, and she is an affiliate faculty member of both the Women’s and Gender Studies Department and the Kinder Institute. Before coming to MU, Catherine Rymph taught at the University of Iowa and as Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Greifswald in Germany.

Cristal Sanchez is a third-year student from Rockford, Illinois, majoring in Journalism and Political Science, with minors in Constitutional Democracy and Business. She is the co-founder of ¿De Veras?, an upstarting bilingual news outlet in the Mid-Missouri area. This passion has ignited her to join the MU Communications Department as a research assistant analyzing how news outlets reporting specifically for people of color are building community. At Mizzou, Cristal is also a part of the executive board for both the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Association of Latin American Students to advocate for Latino students on campus. When she finds a free spot on her calendar, she tries to take care of her many plants, and enjoys trying different foods from different cultures.

Kinder Institute Associate Teaching Professor of Constitutional Democracy and History, lsantoro@missouri.edu
Dr. Lily Santoro is an Associate Professor of Historic Preservation and History at Southeast Missouri State University, where she teaches courses in early American History and Public History. Dr. Santoro earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in American History from the University of Delaware and completed her B.A. in History at the University of Southern California. She holds certificates in Museum Studies from the University of Delaware and Digital Archives and Records Management from San Jose State University.

Dr. Santoro’s current research explores the discourse of popularized science in mid-nineteenth century African American newspapers. Focusing on discussions of topics such as polygenism and comparative anatomy, this study attempts to expand our understanding of the conversations the Black community had among themselves about scientific racism and citizenship as the politics of race shifted between the 1820s and 1870s. Her previous publications focused on the popularization of science in early national Philadelphia and ideas of national identity in popular print culture such as almanacs and periodicals in the late eighteenth-century Anglophone Atlantic.

Dr. Santoro is also an active public historian with experience as a project archivist, collections assistant, and exhibit curator. In partnership with the Bollinger Center for Regional History, she is spearheading the Southeast Missouri History Gateway project, a digital history project that provides training, consultation, and digital platform to under-resourced cultural heritage institutions to digitize archival collections for public access. She joins the Kinder Institute during AY 2023-24 as a Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow.

Scholar (2021)
Raised in Saint Louis, MO, Venkatesh Satheeskumar moved to Columbia to study Biology at the University of Missouri. Following graduation in 2022, he began a Master’s in Public Health at Washington University in Saint Louis, specializing in health policy. While completing this degree, he is working as a graduate research assistant with the Center for Advancing Health Services, Policy, and Economics Research.

Kylie Schmerbach is a junior from Lawson, Missouri, a small town north of Kansas City. She is studying Constitutional Democracy and Public Administration and Policy, with minors in History and Political Science. On campus, Kylie is a member of the Missouri Student Foundation, ASUM, and Kappa Alpha Theta, and at the Kinder Institute, she was part of the 2023-24 cohort of the Society of Fellows and assists with the Kinder Institute Democracy Lab as a coordinator for the Undergraduate Lecture Committee, in addition to working at the front desk as an Ambassador. In her free time, she is an avid reader and likes exploring local shops with friends, and after graduation she hopes to work with a think tank in the D.C. area.

Adam Schwartz is an MU junior studying Political Science and Digital Storytelling, with minors in Journalism and Film. His ultimate goal for his studies is to one day create politically-focused digital media for a news organization. On campus, Adam is in the Mizzou Honors College, a member of Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity, and a part of the Mizzou Esports Media Team, in addition to working for the Campus Activities Programming Board. He also works as the Public Relations Chair for his fraternity, managing their social media pages and community outreach, and on the side, he hosts and produces a weekly entertainment podcast.

C.J. Scott graduated from the University of Missouri in Spring 2024 with bachelor’s degrees in History and Economics and minors in Constitutional Democracy and Ancient Mediterranean Studies. He also received a Certificate in Multicultural Studies.

As an undergraduate, C.J. served as president of the Mizzou Undergraduate Society of History whilst being a member of the Mizzou Debate Union and Mizzou’s President Council. He was also inducted into both Omicron Delta Epsilon and Phi Sigma Theta.

In his pursuit of historical knowledge, C.J. enjoyed studying a myriad of historical eras with a prime fascination with the late Roman Republic. C.J. hopes to learn much about the 18th-century world in his pursuit of an MA in Atlantic History and Politics, with an emphasis on the Seven Year’s War, The American Revolution, and the British West Indies.

Outside of his studies, C.J. enjoys reading, gaming, and hiking.

Hailing from Grain Valley, Missouri, Victoria Seever is an incoming MA student in Atlantic History and a 1L at University of Missouri School of Law. She graduated from Mizzou’s College of Arts and Science in May 2024 with a double major in History and Constitutional Democracy. She also earned a Political Science minor and a Multicultural Studies Certificate.

While studying at the law school and for her master’s, she will be coaching the university’s undergraduate Mock Trial Association and Model UN teams. Victoria is very excited about these positions, as she had a wonderful experience herself in Mock Trial, having competed for four years and acted as a captain and president for the association.

Rich and Nancy Kinder Chair of Constitutional Democracy, Professor of History, Kinder Institute Director, sextonj@missouri.edu
Jay Sexton is the Rich and Nancy Kinder Chair of Constitutional Democracy, Professor of History, and Director of the Kinder Institute. A native of Salina, Kansas, Sexton returned to the Midwest to the University of Missouri in 2016 after spending the better part of two decades at Oxford University in England. He started in Oxford as a grad student Marshall Scholar and worked his way up to being Director of the Rothermere American Institute (RAI) and, upon his departure, being elected a Distinguished Fellow of the RAI and an Emeritus Fellow of Corpus Christi College.

Sexton specializes in the political and economic history of the nineteenth century. His research situates the United States in its international context, particularly as it related to the dominant global structure of the era, the British Empire. His most recent book, A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American History (Basic Books, 2018), argues that international forces shaped the course of U.S. history during its greatest moments of transformative change.

His other books include Debtor Diplomacy: Finance and American Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, 1837-1873 (Oxford, 2005; 2nd ed. 2014) and The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America (Hill and Wang, 2011). He also has published four major collaborative projects: The Global Lincoln (co-edited with Richard Carwardine, Oxford, 2011); Empire’s Twin: U.S. Anti-Imperialism from the Founding to the Age of Terrorism (co-edited with Ian Tyrrell, Cornell, 2015); Crossing Empires: Taking U.S. History into Transimperial Terrain (co-edited with Kristin Hoganson, Duke 2020); and, also co-edited with Kristin Hoganson, The Cambridge History of America and the World: Vol. 2, 1820-1900 (Cambridge, 2021).

Sexton enjoys working with enterprising students, undergrad or grad, who set their own intellectual agenda. When he is not reading or talking history, he is cheering for KC sports teams and following British politics.

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Originally from Lee’s Summit, Quinn Sheppard graduated summa cum laude from Mizzou in Spring 2024 with degrees in Constitutional Democracy and History along with a minor in Political Science.

During her time as an undergraduate, she spent a semester at University College London, conducted research through the Honors College, interned at the State Historical Society of Missouri, and served as President of It’s On Us.

In her free time, Quinn enjoys reading and traveling.

Shanley Silvey is a sophomore from Columbia, MO, double-majoring in Strategic Communications and Spanish. She is the Social Chair for Little Sisters of the Gold Rose, a service sorority on campus, and works in the marketing department for the Missouri School of Health Professions. Shanley worked for the Boone County Clerk’s Office as an election official for the 2020 presidential election and has served in various capacities in other local Boone County elections since 2018. During Summer 2021, she attended a Mizzou Spanish language and culture program in Spain and took classes at the University of Oviedo. Upon graduation, Shanley plans to attend law school or a Master’s program in order to pursue a career as an immigration lawyer.

Olivia Skeans is a third-year student from Republic, Missouri, studying Quantitative Economics. On campus, Olivia is the Head of Internal Relations for Undergraduate Women in Economics and a PLA for the Department of Economics. Outside of school, Olivia loves to do yoga, read books, and keep up with The Bachelor.

Associate Professor and Chair, Department of History, smaler@missouri.edu
Robert L. Smale is Associate Professor and Chair of History at MU. After earning B.A. degrees in History and Spanish at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, he went on to complete his M.A. and Ph.D. in History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he specialized in the study of Latin America. His research focuses on the political and social history of South America’s Andean nations. He is the author of “I Sweat the Flavor of Tin”: Labor Activism in Early Twentieth-Century Bolivia (2010). He regularly teaches courses on the history of constitutional democracy in Latin America and the region’s revolutionary traditions.

Mathias Smith is a junior from Fenton, Missouri, majoring in History and Constitutional Democracy (emphasis in U.S. & the World). He is a member of the Army ROTC program on-campus and will be entering his MSIII year. He did research on the Santa Fe Trail as part of Kinder’s 2023-24 ASH Scholars Team, with his specific contribution forming the basis of an episode for the podcast, Wheels Across the West. Outside of MU, he has spent his summers at Philmont Scout Ranch near Cimarron, NM, backpacking and guiding scouts through the mountains as a Ranger. He is Navajo and Osage, and loves attending and dancing the style Men’s Southern Straight at powwows across Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma. In his free time, he loves to read. After graduating, Mathias plans to commission through ROTC into the U.S. Army and eventually attend graduate school.

Kinder Institute Program Coordinator, cspalding@missouri.edu
Caroline Spalding received Bachelor of Arts degrees in Political Science and History from Mizzou in 2016 and her J.D. and Master’s in Public Administration from MU Law and the Truman School of Public affairs, respectively, in 2020.  While in law school, she spent a summer abroad working for the Human Rights Commission in Cape Town, South Africa, conducted research on rehabilitation and intervention programs at the Center for Criminal and Juvenile Justice Priorities at Mizzou, and was also extensively involved in the American Constitution Society and the Equal Justice Law Association. Caroline has been involved with the Kinder Institute for some time: as part of the inaugural class of the Society of Fellows; as Senior Editor for Vol. 2 of the Journal on Constitutional Democracy and Deputy Editor for Vol. 5 of the Journal; and from 2017 as a staff member. Caroline is the Institute’s fiscal officer and MA Academic Advisor, and organizes study abroad programs.

Fellow (2014-15), Scholar (2015)
Born and raised in Kansas City, MO, Emerson studied Economics at Mizzou before moving to Washington, D.C. Since graduating, he has worked for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Bipartisan Policy Center, where he is currently a policy analyst. He also earned a Master’s degree in Economics from Georgetown University.

Professor and Hicks and Martha Griffiths Chair in American Political Institutions, Truman School of Government & Public Affairs, squirep@missouri.edu
Peverill Squire joined the Department of Political Science at the University of Missouri in 2007 and holds the Hicks and Martha Griffiths Chair in American Political Institutions. His Ph.D. is from the University of California, Berkeley (1986). Professor Squire previously taught at the University of Iowa and has been a visiting professor at Meiji University in Tokyo, Japan, and a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer, holding the John Marshall Chair in Political Science at the Budapest (Hungary) University of Economic Sciences. He was senior editor of Legislative Studies Quarterly for many years, has served as chair of the American Political Science Association’s Legislative Studies Section and as co-chair of the International Political Science Association’s Research Committee of Legislative Specialists, and was given the 2018 Career Achievement Award by the American Political Science Association’s State Politics and Policy Section. Professor Squire specializes in American politics and legislative studies.

Vice Provost for International Programs, International Center Director, setgmaierm@missouri.edu
Mary Stegmaier is an Associate Professor in the Truman School of Public Affairs and the Vice Provost for International Programs at the University of Missouri. Her research concentrates on elections and voting behavior in the U.S. and Europe, and has been published in a variety of political science journals including the British Journal of Political Science, East European Politics & Societies, Electoral Studies, Political Behavior, Politics & Policy, Public Choice, and the Annual Review of Political Science. She serves on several journal editorial boards, including the International Journal of Forecasting, Political Science Research and Methods, Electoral Studies, the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, and Politics & Policy. In addition to publishing in peer-reviewed journals, her work has also appeared in the Washington Post, the Brookings Institution Blog, the Democratic Audit, and the London School of Economics Blogs.  Dr. Stegmaier has also served as an international election observer with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Albania, Macedonia, Belarus, and Kyrgyzstan.

Postdoctoral Fellow in Political History, austin.stewart@missouri.edu
Austin Stewart holds a B.A. and M.A. in History from Cleveland State University and a Ph.D. in Early American History from Lehigh University. He previously served as a Visiting Professor of History and Native American Studies at Northland College in Wisconsin during the 2022-2023 academic year. His teaching interests center on courses in the history of the Atlantic World, Native history, the Revolutionary Era, the Early Republic, and the nineteenth-century American West. Austin’s current research focuses on Native migrations, territoriality, and settler colonialism in the early nineteenth-century West. He is interested in comparative legalities and constructions of property, sovereignty, and identity in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Americas. He joins the Kinder Institute as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Political History.

Danika Stilwell is a junior from Fenton, Missouri, majoring in Constitutional Democracy (Law and Institutions) and Economics, with minors in Journalism, History, and Political Science. She participated in the Kinder Institute Residential College her freshman year and is a member of the Honors College. On campus, Danika served as the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for her sorority and worked as a Peer Learning Assistant for the Economics Department, and she is
currently a tutor at the Writing Center and a member of Mizzou’s largest student-run philanthropic organization, Rockin’ Against Multiple Sclerosis (RAMS). In her free time, Danika loves to read, golf, and spend time with her family.

Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Thought, lsvabek@missouri.edu
Larry Svabek is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Thought at the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy. His research program is rooted in the history of political thought with a focus on the study of African American thought, democratic theory, and political economy. His first book, A Real Revolution Within: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Lost Promise of African American Cooperation, explores W.E.B. Du Bois’s preoccupation with and involvement in African American cooperative movements as a key strategy of emancipation. A Real Revolution Within both recuperates the efforts of African American cooperative leaders to generate a new revolutionary subject and reframes Du Bois’s ongoing disillusionment with liberal programs of civil rights to reorient contemporary readers.

Larry holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago, and a BA in Political Science, Economics, and Critical Theory from Northwestern University. Prior to joining the Kinder Institute, Larry served as a teaching fellow in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. His research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago. You can read his writing in American Political Thought and the Chicago Sun Times.

Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, sylerc@missouri.edu
Claire Syler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Missouri and the former Education Director of the Nashville Shakespeare Festival in Tennessee. Her research focuses on applied theatre, the cultural politics of casting, and performance pedagogy, and has appeared in Theatre Annual, Qualitative Inquiry, Applied Theatre Research, and Research in Drama Education among others. With Daniel Banks, she co-edited Casting a Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative (Routledge 2019).

Braden Taylor graduated from Culver-Stockton College in May 2024 with a degree in History. He played baseball while studying at Culver Stockton, as well.

Outside of the classroom, Braden enjoys playing video games, coaching baseball, and spending time with his dogs.

Emma Thompson went to middle and high school in Edmond, Oklahoma, a suburb outside of OKC, and spent her earlier years in a suburb outside of Houston, Texas. She is a junior double major in Constitutional Democracy and Political Science, with minors in History and Religious Studies. Emma is the Vice President of Operations for the Alpa Mu chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta, doing risk prevention and member support, and after graduation, she plans to go to law school and then work in government doing political advising and communications. In her free time, she is either laughing with friends or consuming some sort of media and particularly loves when books and TV collide.

Scholarly Programming Fellow, mltmg5@umsystem.edu
Mackenzie Tor is a History Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Missouri and a Graduate Fellow at the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy. She received her B.A. in History & Italian from Providence College and her M.A. in History from Mizzou. She is currently working on a dissertation which examines how race and racism informed the course of the temperance movement in the nineteenth-century United States. When not hard at work, Mackenzie enjoys reading, crafting, practicing yoga, and cheering on her favorite Boston sports teams.

Professor and Chair, Department of Ancient Mediterranean Studies, troutd@missouri.edu
Dennis Trout is Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Missouri. Before coming to MU in 2000, he was Associate Professor of Classics at Tufts University. He received his Ph.D. in Ancient History from Duke University in 1989. His research focuses on the period of Late Antiquity and engages material and visual evidence as well as literary sources. He has been President of the North American Patristics Society and is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Loeb Classical Library Foundation. He is the author of Paulinus of Nola: Life, Letters, and Poems (University of California Press, 1999) and Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2015). He is also interested in ancient political thought and practice, and he teaches a course on Political Thought in Classical and Christian Antiquity for the Kinder Institute’s Minor and Certificate in American Constitutional Democracy.

Addie Von Drehle is a junior from Kansas City studying Constitutional Democracy (emphasis in Social and Political Thought), with minors in Philosophy and Psychology. She works as a server at a local restaurant and is highly involved in medical fundraising efforts on Mizzou’s campus. Addie’s goal is to learn about the why and how of the world in order to best discern what her role might be in improving the life circumstances of the masses. She loves trivia, vintage clothes, crossword puzzles, spending time outside, and listening to music (favorite band:  The Beatles). Addie’s ecstatic for a summer in D.C., where she spent the first seven years of her life, and to re-visit all the Smithsonian museums.

Lucy Washburn is a junior from Jefferson City, Missouri, studying Political Science and Constitutional Democracy. On campus, she is heavily involved with 812 Ministries, serves as the Vice President of the political science club Pi Sigma Alpha, acts as the Chair of Educational Outreach for the Kinder Institute Undergraduate Society, and is an active member of Pi Sigma Alpha pre-law fraternity. In her free time, Lucy enjoys reading, painting, and game nights with friends. Upon graduation, she hopes to attend law school.

Alice Willard is a junior from Memphis, Tennessee, majoring in Political Science (Pre-Law) and Constitutional Democracy and minoring in History. In the future, she hopes to practice law and continue researching the fundamental texts and constitutions of the American founding. On campus, Alice serves as a ministry team member in Reformed University Fellowship, Chair of Events for the Kinder Institute Undergraduate Society, and works closely with the Kinder Institute Democracy Lab as a programming fellow. In her spare time, she coaches volleyball, reads novels, watches movies, and is always on the lookout for the next great cold brew.

Lillian Williams is a junior honors student from Wichita, Kansas, pursuing a degree in History with an emphasis in Public History. She is active on campus as the Vice President of the Undergrad Historical Society and as Vice President Administration of her sorority. This school year, Lillian will serve as a research assistant for the Haskell Monroe Collection digital history project, and she previously completed internships with the Supreme Court of Missouri and the State Historical Society of Missouri. In Summer 2021, Lillian worked as the student assistant at the University’s Archives and she continues to work as a Test Administrator for Pearson Professional Center. She is passionate about local history and plans to pursue further education in one of her two interests of law or public history after graduation.

Ava Wischnewski is a sophomore from Lee’s Summit, Missouri, majoring in Constitutional Democracy and Economics. In addition to being a Kinder Kid, Ava is a captain on Mizzou’s Mock Trial team and a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, and she also manages a local State House campaign. When not working or studying, she mostly spends time with friends, rewatches Gilmore Girls, and does some more work. Ava has a passion for state politics and would like to continue working in state government races throughout college and after.

Gia Woodfolk is a senior from Charlottesville, Virginia, majoring in Journalism, with an emphasis in Strategic Communications, and minoring in Constitutional Democracy. In addition to her participation in the 2024-25 cohort of the Kinder Institute’s Society of Fellows, Gia has conducted research through the Discovery Fellows program. After graduation, she plans to pursue a career in strategic communications and then attend business school. In her free time, Gia enjoys running, watching sports, and playing with her two corgis.

Maria Yepez Damian is a Mexican American bilingual student from Kansas City, Missouri. She is an MU sophomore pursuing a double major in Political Science and International Studies with emphases in Pre-Law and Latin American Studies. On-campus, she is part of the Association of Latin American Students as well as Chi Alpha campus ministry. Outside of school, she spends most of her time volunteering, reading Beverly Tatum novels, listening to music, and watching Scandal re-runs. Maria ultimately plans to further her education in law and public policy in hopes of pursuing her passion for helping the Hispanic community.

Kinder Institute Assistant Professor of Constitutional Democracy, Assistant Professor of Political Science, czug@missouri.edu
Charles U. Zug is Kinder Assistant Professor of Constitutional Democracy and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri. He received his Ph.D. in Government from the University of Texas at Austin. His expertise is in American political development and constitutional theory, with a focus on the American presidency and the relationship between ideas and institutional development. In addition to scholarly articles, book chapters, and popular press writings, he is the author of Demagogues in American Politics (Oxford University Press, 2022) and Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Federal Highway Act (University Press of Kansas, 2024). Among other projects, he is currently writing a book tentatively titled Constructing a Mythology of American Federalism.