Directory

Ruth Adesanya graduated from the University of Warwick with a B.A. in History, where she mainly focused on the ‘Black Atlantic’, British imperialism, and Migration History. During her time as an undergraduate, Ruth also had the opportunity to study abroad at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Outside her studies, Ruth enjoys drawing, painting and travelling to explore different countries and cultures.

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.

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.

Heather Ba is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Missouri, as well as the Research Coordinator for the White House Transition Project (http://whitehousetransitionproject.org). She completed her Ph.D. at UNC-Chapel Hill, and her research interests include international political economy, U.S. foreign policy, and the American presidency. Specifically, her scholarship examines the linkages between international relations theory and the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, U.S. foreign policy crisis management, and the role of presidential advisory systems in U.S. foreign policy decision making. Additionally, through her work with the White House Transition Project, she studies presidential transitions, the politics of executive appointments, and presidential behavior during foreign policy crises.

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.

In 2018, Jenelle Beavers joined the UM System Office of the General Counsel after serving as the Associate Director of MU’s Honors College. Before moving back to Missouri, she spent eight years as a trial attorney with the United States Department of Justice. In 2011, she earned a special commendation from the Assistant Attorney General for Outstanding Service for her work on behalf of U.S. taxpayers. From 2005-2008, she was a litigation associate in the Washington D.C. office of Latham & Watkins, where she represented individuals, non-profit and for-profit entities, and other institutional clients in white-collar and governmental investigations and civil litigation. She also served on the firm’s global hiring committee. Originally from Kansas City, MO, Ms. Beavers holds a B.A. in English from the University of Missouri and credits her professional success to her undergraduate curricular and extracurricular experiences at MU. She earned her J.D. and M.P.H. from the University of Michigan where she was an editor of the Michigan Law Review. Ms. Beavers also currently serves on the Missouri Supreme Court’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Fairness.

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.

Kinder Institute Associate Professor of Constitutional Democracy, MU Law Associate Professor and Wall Family Fellow, thomas.bennett@missouri.edu
Thomas Bennett is Associate Professor of Constitutional Democracy at the Kinder Institute and Associate Professor and Wall Family Fellow at MU’s School of Law, where he teaches constitutional law and civil procedure. His research focuses on how complex civil litigation strains the relationship between state and federal courts and impacts the separation of powers. Professor Bennett’s scholarship has appeared or will appear in the NYU Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, and the Minnesota Law Review. Before joining the faculty in 2020, he was a Furman Academic Fellow at NYU School of Law and spent four years in private practice litigating appeals, complex civil cases, and administrative matters. Professor Bennett is also a former law clerk to the Honorable Gerard E. Lynch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Honorable Jesse M. Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He holds a JD magna cum laude from NYU School of Law and a BA with honors from Swarthmore College.

From St. Louis, Missouri, Alex Bernier graduated from Mizzou with B.A.s in Political Science, History, and Constitutional Democracy, along with a minor in Ancient Mediterranean Studies. His primary academic focus has been on the formation, development, and impact of government regimes, with a specific emphasis on the Haudenosaunee Confederacy of the American Northeast and its influence on the U.S. Constitution. Alex plans to attend law school after completing the M.A. program. Outside of academics, he spends his time hiking, biking, or playing ultimate frisbee with the Mizzou club team.

Cole Bower is a rising junior from Kansas City, MO, triple-majoring in Constitutional Democracy, Political Science, and Economics. He was a member of the Kinder Institute’s Residential College and Society of Fellows and is the treasurer of Mizzou College Democrats. He currently works as finance director for a competitive State Senate race in Boone County, and previously managed a successful State House campaign in south Columbia. In his free time, Cole enjoys cheering on Mizzou basketball and playing Frederic Chopin’s music on piano. Upon graduation he plans to pursue a full-time career in Democratic politics.

Originally from St. Louis, Julia Bursby is a sophomore double-majoring in Political Science (Pre-Law) and Constitutional Democracy (Social & Political Thought). While at Mizzou, Julia has taken part in several extracurricular activities, including becoming a member of the Pi Sigma Alpha Political Science Honor Society and serving as an MSA Senator. Apart from her studies, Julia enjoys painting, soaking in the sun, watching movies, and listening to her favorite bands (Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and CAKE). Ultimately, she hopes to take a few years off in between undergrad and law/grad school to join the Peace Corps, before pursuing her passions for advocacy, history, and law.

Fellow (2014-15), Scholar (2015)
Anurag Ram Chandran is a social impact consultant at Dalberg Global Advisors based in Mumbai, India. Previously, he served as the Founder and Executive Director at Impact On The Ground Foundation (IOTG), an NGO focused on improving student learning outcomes in rural India. An inaugural Schwarzman Scholar, Anurag received a Master’s in Global Affairs from Tsinghua University and prior to that, graduated from the University of Missouri with honors in Political Science and Economics.

Assistant Teaching Professor (Kinder Institute, MU Honors College, Department of History), colemanw@missouri.edu
Billy Coleman coordinates the collaborative 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 articles on early and nineteenth-century American music and politics appear in the Journal of Southern History, the Journal of the Early Republic, and Oxford Bibliographies in American Literature. Previously, after completing a Ph.D. in History at University College London (UCL), he held postdoctoral fellowships with the Kinder Institute and in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia. He was the Book Reviews Editor of American Nineteenth Century History for five-years and is co-editing an upcoming special issue on music in American nineteenth-century history for the same publication. His new project, “Making Music National in a Settler State,” is exploring the transnational origins of national music in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Alongside the Revolutions and Constitutions sequence, Dr. Coleman regularly teaches history seminars on the American Revolutionary Era and The Young Republic for the Kinder Institute, interdisciplinary humanities electives in the Honors College, and survey courses in early American history.

Kinder Institute Associate Director, 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.

Edilberto Corte Real de Oliveira hails from Timor-Leste, a small, half-island nation located at the crossroads of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. A rising senior, he is pursuing dual-degree programs in Political Science and Sociology, with a minor in Criminology. Edilberto is an active member of the Mizzou community, holding leadership positions in various organizations such as the Beta Chi Omicron Honor Society and Missouri International Student Council. Outside of his academic commitments, Edilberto loves to travel and immerse himself in new cultures, broadening his perspective and understanding of the world. He is deeply passionate about international development and hopes to leverage his education and experiences to uplift individuals residing in post-conflict countries.

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.

Erica Croft received a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Constitutional Studies from Utah Valley University in 2021, graduating magna cum laude. As a Wood Research Assistant at UVU’s Center for Constitutional Studies from 2019 to 2022, Erica contributed to the Quill Project, a digital history initiative which maps legislative and constitutional processes. In 2022, Erica presented her work on the digitization of the records of the United States Congress from 1862 to 1875, which emphasized the development of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Constitutional Amendments.

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.

Drew Dahlgren is a third-year student at Mizzou from Arlington Heights, Illinois. He is majoring in Constitutional Democracy, Religious Studies, and Political Science (Pre-Law), with a minor in History. On campus, he is a member of the baritone section of Marching Mizzou and Chairman of the Washington Society, a student organization for political and philosophical discussion. Drew has taken an interest in studying the intersection of religion and politics in America and abroad, and he hopes to attend law school to pursue a career in constitutional law.

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.

Christa Dierksheide is Brockman Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation Professor and Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Amelioration and Empire: Progress and Slavery in the Plantation Americas, 1770-1840 (Virginia, 2014) and a forthcoming global history of Jefferson’s family members on both sides of the color line, ca. 1820-1880 (Yale). Formerly Historian at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, she has curated several exhibitions and written and lectured about the early United States for a wide variety of scholarly and public audiences. Her next book project, co-authored with Nicholas Guyatt, is Jefferson’s Wolf: The Struggle to End Slavery in the Founding Era (Harvard). She will join the Kinder Institute during AY 2023-24 as a Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow.

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.

Cooper Drury is Senior Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Science and Professor of Political Science and Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri. He earned his BA and MA from Michigan State University (1990, 1992) and his PhD from Arizona State University (1997). 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, a textbook, and over two dozen articles and chapters and served as editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy Analysis. A committed teacher, Professor Drury has trained more than twenty doctoral students and has been awarded multiple teaching and mentorship awards.

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.

James Endersby is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Canadian Studies Program at the University of Missouri. He earned a Ph.D. in Government at the University of Texas at Austin and was a fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Press and Politics at Harvard University before coming to MU. His research and teaching interests include American and Canadian politics, with particular focus on voting and elections, interests groups, and the media and politics. He is co-author, with Bill Horner of the MU Political Science Department, of Lloyd Gaines and the Fight to End Segregation, a study of the landmark civil rights case Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada that was the first book published as part of the Kinder Institute’s Studies in Constitutional Democracy monograph series with University of Missouri Press. He has received several awards including an Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award from the University of Missouri and the Governor General’s Medallion (Canada).

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 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 presently serves as Legal Counsel to the National Association of Evangelicals and on the Board of Directors of the Christian Legal Society. At MU, he teaches courses on Civil Procedure, Religions Liberty and Church-State Relations, Federal Civil Rights Litigation, and Constitutional Law.

Devin Fergus is the Arvarh E. Strickland Distinguished Professor of History and Black Studies at University of Missouri. His research focuses on political economy, policy, and inequality in modern America. Professor Fergus is the author of Land of the Fee (Oxford, 2018), which explores the hidden costs of rising financial fees at home, school, work, and transportation on wealth and mobility in modern America. A much-anticipated work, Land of the Fee has been called one of the five best books for understanding capitalism today. His current research project examines white-collar crime and the racial wealth gap.

Fergus is guest editor of the special issue Banking without Borders: Culture and Credit in the New Financial World for Kalfou, a journal published by Temple University Press. This special issue examines the impact of four decades of financial deregulation in the U.S. on vulnerable populations, which has increasingly affected the middle class. He has written widely on policy, political economy, and inequality for the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Guardian. Along with Louis Hyman, Bethany Moreton, and Julia Ott, Professor Fergus is also editor of the Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism book series published by Columbia University Press.

Professor Fergus has worked closely with several national policy organizations (e.g., Demos, Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative, the Center for Global Policy Solutions, and Prosperity Now) and has presented research to a number of federal entities, including the U.S. Treasury, U.S. Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Special Master (Kenneth Feinberg) for TARP Executive Compensation. Professor Fergus received his Ph.D. in American history from Columbia University.

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.

From Providence, RI, Mia graduated from the University of Rhode Island in May 2023 with a B.A. in Psychology and a B.A. in Africana Studies. She spent time on the Student Advisory Council for the Africana Studies Department to help revamp the program and recruit others who may be interested in the major. She also held a position as the Vice President of Intellectual Development, and was a founding member of her sorority, Alpha Chi Omega, which re-established at URI in 2021. Additionally, her favorite shows are RuPaul’s Drag Race and Survivor, and being from New England, she also loves watching Celtics games. Go Celtics! Currently, Mia’s research is focused on the free Black society of New Orleans from 1763 to 1825. History and Geography have been her favorite subjects since she was young.

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.

Laura Frymire is a rising senior at the University of Missouri who grew up in Columbia with seven siblings, three of whom have also attended or are currently attending Mizzou. Laura is double-majoring in History and Political Science, minoring in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and pursuing Honors, Multicultural, and American Constitutional Democracy Certificates. She spent half of her undergraduate career as a research assistant to the previous Director of the Honors College, Dr. J.D. Bowers, while he worked on his latest book about the Maronites, an endangered linguistic minority in Cyprus. She studied abroad during Spring 2022 at the Academic Language Institute in Alicante, Spain, and spent the Summer 2022 internship cycle at the State Attorney General’s Office in Jefferson City. After graduation, Laura plans to attend law school and pursue a career in transactional, corporate law. In her free time, she enjoys journaling, reading, and spending time with family and friends.

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.

Jakob Gibson received his B.A. in Political Science from Westminster College in Fulton, MO, where he also completed various internships, op eds, and conference presentations on various ethical warfare topics. As a student in the M.A. program, he hopes to specialize in the study of ethical warfare and the War on Terror.

Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Thought & Constitutionalism, tginnane@missouri.edu
Tara Ginnane works in constitutional theory, political theory, and comparative constitutionalism. She received a BA from the University of Oxford, an LLM from the University of Chicago, a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, and a certificate in French and European law from the University of Paris (Panthéon-Assas). 

Tara’s political theory research focuses on how transnational political participation affects the spatiality of democracy. She is also interested in how territory matters to political community. Her dissertation, “The National Membership Politics of External Voting,” proposes normative guidelines for external voting policies based on an original comparative empirical study of their relationship to national membership. Tara’s constitutional theory research focuses on the normative logics of constitutional structures and has been published in Polity.  

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.

Jacqueline Glenn is a third-year honors student from Edwardsville, Illinois, pursuing a double-major in English and Constitutional Democracy, where her emphases are Black Literature and Law & Institutions, respectively. She loves all things pertaining to civil rights. Aside from the Society of Fellows and Kinder Scholars, Jacqueline is a member of Phi Mu sorority, a Student Ambassador for the College of Arts and Sciences, and serves as a Team Leader for Jumpstart Mizzou. After graduation, Jacqueline hopes to attend law school and eventually practice some sort of human rights law.

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.

Scholar (2015), Fellow (2015-16)
Born and raised in Farmington, MO, Maddie moved to Columbia to study Economics and Political Science at the University of Missouri. After graduating in 2016, she spent nearly three years in the Missouri Governor’s Office, serving first as chief of staff to the First Lady and working closely with the Governor’s policy and legislative teams on issues including foster care, adoption, and child welfare advocacy. She then served as manager of strategic initiatives and special assistant to the state’s Chief Operating Officer, a role created for her, through which she worked with the Governor’s Cabinet and the state’s 16 executive departments to make government work better for the citizens of Missouri. Maddie earned her law degree in 2021 and currently serves in the Missouri Attorney General’s Office as an Assistant Attorney General for Special Litigation. She and her husband, Bradley, split their time between St. Louis and Columbia with their aussiedoodle, Millie.

Jake Haselswerdt received his PhD from George Washington University and joined the MU faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Truman School of Public Affairs in 2016, after serving as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan and in U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer’s office through the American Political Science Association’s Congressional Fellowship Program. His research centers around the politics of U.S. public policy, with a particular focus on the political causes and consequences of policy choice and implementation in the substantive realms of health, social, and tax policy. These interests encompass several different strands of current scholarly pursuits which span the study of institutions and behavior. One current project, for example, deals with understanding the reasons for policy outcomes (e.g., why have some states chosen to cooperate with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, while others have not?). Another examines the political consequences of policy enactments and policy design choices (e.g., how has ACA implementation affected political engagement and participation? How does policy design shape the way the public thinks about that policy and the people who benefit from it?). Recently, he has also begun projects on the role of self-interest in attitudes about social policies like Medicare and student debt relief and on the potential of research on health outcomes to influence the policy process in other areas, like economic policy.

Ben Henschel is a rising senior from Fairway, KS, majoring in Journalism and Constitutional Democracy, with minors in Economics, Political Science, and History. Ben is currently President of the Mizzou Alumni Association Student Board and sits on the MAA Board of Directors. He is also Senior Editor at Midwestern Citizen, an undergraduate law and policy journal based in Ann Arbor, and enjoys reading and writing about law and music in his free time. Ben has worked for a variety of organizations, including as a legal intern for the Missouri State Public Defender’s Office, a marketing intern for Starting Points Journal, an account manager for Matchbook Marketing, and a student ambassador for the Kinder Institute. Ben spends a lot of his free time exploring new record stores and bookshops, along with talking basketball with friends.

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.

Emily Hickey is a senior from St. Louis, Mo., double-majoring in English and Journalism (Strategic Communications). Around Mizzou, she’s involved with the MU Tour Team and has served on the executive board of the Alumni Association Student Board. She loves to travel—she has interned in Washington, D.C., through the Kinder Scholars Program, and has studied abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland—and if you couldn’t tell by what she’s studying, also loves to read and write. She’s an editorial intern at The Missouri Review, and hopes to pursue work in education, publishing, and writing her own stories one day. In her free time, she can be found tirelessly searching for the perfect iced vanilla latte.

MU History Postdoctoral Fellow, emholmes@missouri.edu
Erin Holmes holds a B.A. in History from the College of William and Mary, a Certificate in Early American History and Museum Studies from the National Institute of American History and Democracy, a Ph.D. in History from the University of South Carolina, and a Certificate in Historical Archaeology and Cultural Resource Management from the USC Department of Anthropology. Her manuscript project, The House that Slavery Built: Social and Material Transformation in the British Atlantic World, 1670-1831, explores how the built environment—buildings, landscapes, objects, and the spaces in between—shaped the experience of slavery within the plantation house, transforming colonial identity to create the conditions that made the American Revolution possible. Her research has been funded by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon, among others, and from 2017-2019, she was an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the American Philosophical Society.

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.

Grant Hopkins earned a B.S. in Philosophy from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2012. His undergraduate studies focused on ethical and political philosophy. Upon graduation, Grant commissioned in the United States Army as an active-duty Infantry officer. After fulfilling his service obligation, Grant returned to his hometown of Jefferson City, Missouri and applied to the University of Missouri School of Law. As a dual J.D./M.A. student and veteran, Grant is thankful for the opportunity to learn from his peers and instructors while also bringing his own unique experiences and perspectives to the classroom.

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.

Morgan Hurt is a junior at Mizzou, pursuing degrees in Geography and Constitutional Democracy, with Certificates in Geospatial Intelligence and Geographic Information Science (GIS). She is very involved with department activities, serving as president of the Geography Club and treasurer of Mizzou’s chapter of the Gamma Theta Upsilon International Geographical Honor Society. Morgan currently lives in Columbia, Missouri, but was born in Texas and spent a good chunk of her childhood in Oklahoma. In what little free time she has, Morgan enjoys reading, running, and watching The Office. After graduation, she plans to enter the field of GIS in either the public or private sector.

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.

Alex Insley studied History at the University of Oxford and now joins the M.A. in Atlantic History and Politics as the Oxford fellow for 2023-2024. Having primarily worked on fields of British and European history over the past few years, he is interested in broadening the scope of his research interests through this programme. Among his many areas of historical interest, Alex is particularly keen to look further into the domestic impact of imperialism on culture and politics, and how that will broaden his understanding of contemporary political developments.

Tommy Jackson is a third-year student majoring in Constitutional Democracy, History, and Economics, with minors in Political Science, Philosophy, and East Asian Studies. He is the founder and president of the Kinder Institute Undergraduate Society, a university-wide organization dedicated to connecting Kinder students to other Kinder students, to peers at Mizzou and other universities, and to the local Columbia community through the “Applied Constitutional Democracy” program. He is also the founder and chair of the Mid-Missouri Undergraduate Conference on Democracy Studies, the inaugural meeting of which will be held in February 2024 on the topic “Democracy And…” Tommy serves as a Resident Advisor-Peer Learning Assistant for the Kinder Institute Democracy Lab FIG, and is heavily involved in the Missouri Debate Union, Mizzou Model UN, and the Omicron Delta Epsilon international economics honors society. He has previously been involved in the Society of Fellows and Oxford study abroad programs, sits on the College of Arts & Science Student Council, and volunteers at the State Historical Society of Missouri.

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.

Miyah Jones is a junior from Nashville, TN. She has a Political Science major, with an emphasis in Pre-Law, and a Constitutional Democracy minor. Her goals are to attend Law School after finishing her undergraduate career. She is heavily involved on campus with the Missouri Students Association (Student Body President), Black Pre-Law Students Association (President), Mizzou Women’s Basketball (Manager), Mizzou Black Women’s Initiative, and Phi Alpha Delta Pre-Law Fraternity. This past summer, Miyah worked as a Summer Welcome Leader, and in the fall, she volunteered as a Welcome Week Leader. Outside of school, Miyah enjoys working at the Mizzou Rec, spending time with her family, cooking delicious meals, and traveling across the world. A fun fact about Miyah is that she is the very first Black Female President of the Missouri Students Association in the organization’s history.

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.

Ilyana Karthas is an Associate Professor of History at University of Missouri and an affiliate faculty member in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, where she served as the first Scholar’s Chair in 2010-11. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in History from Brown University, as well as an M.A. in Women’s Studies and History from Oxford University, and she taught for three years in the History Department and Women’s Studies Program at McGill University before coming to MU in 2007. Her research area is 19^th and early 20^th-century French intellectual, cultural, and gender history, with an emphasis on national identity formation, modern aesthetics, gender ideology, and the politics of the body. Prof. Karthas’ book, When Ballet Became French: Modern Ballet and the Cultural Politics of France (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), is the first book-length study to address how and why ballet revived in early 20^th-century France after a long period of decline, and her current book project, Authority of the Mind: Women Critics, the Shaping of the Performing Arts, and the Politics of Culture in early 20^th Century France, investigates women’s roles as “authorities on culture” in France. She regularly teaches courses on topics including the intellectual and cultural history of Europe, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the history/politics of the body and sexuality, and she was awarded the campus-wide Maxine Christopher Shutz Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2013.

Lael Keiser is a Professor and Chair in the University of Missouri Department of Political Science and Director of MU’s Truman School of Public Affairs. She completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  Her research interests fall at the intersection of political science, public administration, and public policy, with particular points of focus on how the representation of minorities and women within public organizations affects government legitimacy and policy outcomes, as well as on the role of the bureaucracy in creating public policy within the constraints of constitutional democracy. Professor Keiser regularly teaches courses on the policy-making process, bureaucracy, and administrative politics, and she is currently working on a book project that examines the role of professional associations representing street-level bureaucrats in improving the implementation of public policy and the responsiveness of the bureaucracy to elected officials and federal executives.

Sean Kelly graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a B.B.A. in May 2019, majoring in both Accounting and Economics. After a two-year stint as a public accountant, he came to the Kinder Institute as part of their dual-degree program, concurrently pursuing the M.A. in Atlantic History & Politics and a J.D., with a concentration in tax law. Sean has a keen interest in modern transatlantic political exchange and heterodox political economy. When he isn’t listening to a good podcast, he enjoys watching college football and hockey.

From St. Louis, Missouri, Claire Kelly graduated summa cum laude from the University of Dayton Honors Program in May of 2023 with dual majors in Political Science and International Studies, with a concentration in Peace and Global Security and a minor in Human Rights Studies. Claire will also begin law school at the University of Missouri in the fall.

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.

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.

Mikayla Kitchen is a rising senior at the University of Missouri from Pittsburg, Kansas. She is studying Public Health with minors in Political Science and Leadership & Public Service. She is passionate about healthy people and healthy systems and plans to pursue a career in public policy with a special interest in health policy after graduating from Mizzou. She serves her community as a leader for a student ministry, a summit coordinator and research assistant for a public health initiative, and a legislative intern for a Missouri State Representative. She loves the outdoors, exploring new foods, and live music.

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.

Jack Kunkel was born and raised in Eureka, MO, a small town outside of St. Louis. Throughout his life, he has placed great emphasis on academics and the pursuit of knowledge, well reflected in his college career. Jack is currently a rising junior, pursuing a triple major in Journalism (Strategic Communication), Constitutional Democracy, and Political Science, as well as a minor in History. Through his time at the University of Missouri, Jack has been inspired to pursue a career helping others, which he got a head start on during his time in Washington, D.C., as part of the Summer 2022 Kinder Scholars Program.

Thom Lambert received his J.D. from the University of Chicago and currently serves as Professor and Wall Chair in Corporate Law and Governance at the University of Missouri School of Law. His scholarship focuses on antitrust, corporate, and regulatory matters, and he is the co-author of Antitrust Law: Interpretation and Implementation (5th ed., Foundation Press, 2013) and the author or co-author of over 20 scholarly articles, which have appeared in journals and publications including, Antitrust Bulletin, the Boston College Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review, the Texas Law Review, and the Yale Journal on Regulation. He also blogs regularly at “Truth on the Market,” a site focused on academic commentary on antitrust, business, and economic legal issues. He is a past recipient of the Law School’s Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award for teaching excellence; the MU-wide Gold Chalk Award for Excellence in Teaching at the graduate level; and the 2007 and 2011 Shook Hardy & Bacon Excellence in Research Awards for best law faculty scholarship. Prior to joining the faculty at the Law School, he practiced law in the Chicago office of Sidley Austin; served as a John M. Olin Fellow at Northwestern University School of Law and the Center for the Study of American Business; and clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Kinder Institute Graduate Fellow, Political Science Ph.D. Candidate, zplbd7@mail.missouri.edu
Zach Lang is a Political Science Ph.D. candidate at the Harry S. Truman School of Government & Public Affairs and a graduate fellow at the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri. Before moving to Missouri, he received his B.A. in Government from St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. His subfields are American politics and public policy. His research focuses on federalism and intergovernmental relations. His dissertation examines the content of multistate lawsuits against the federal government in recent decades, the role that state AGs play in them, and the tactics states engage in during litigation.

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.

Lyn Lepsky graduated cum laude from Mizzou in the spring of 2022 with degrees in Constitutional Democracy and Political Science and a certificate in Multicultural Studies. During their undergraduate studies, they participated in the Kinder Institute Residential College, Kinder’s Society of Fellows, and Mizzou’s Honors College, while also working as a Residential Adviser and Peer Learning Assistant in Wolpers Hall. Lyn’s research interests include the U.S. Reconstruction Era, Abolitionist Feminism, Labor Rights, and the intersections between economic and political systems. Following the conclusion of the M.A., they plan to pursue their Ph.D. in American Studies.

Matthew Levine studied History and Politics at the University of Cambridge before embarking on the M.A. in Atlantic History and Politics at Mizzou. He is particularly interested in the history of American expansion, having written a dissertation on the Purchase of Alaska whilst at Cambridge under the guidance of Professor Nick Guyatt. He hopes to use the M.A. to further explore the connections between American and British empire-building in the long nineteenth century.

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.

Paul Litton is the Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and the R.B. Price Professor of Law at MU’s School of Law. Before joining the faculty in 2006, he earned a J.D. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania and spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Clinical Bioethics within the National Institutes of Health. Dean Litton also served two years as a 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. While at Mizzou, he has 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. Dean Litton publishes scholarship relating to criminal law, bioethics, and their intersection, and he teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Death Penalty Law, Bioethics, and Jurisprudence.

Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Thought & Constitutionalism, falgk6@missouri.edu
Ferris Lupino holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Washington and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Brown University. His manuscript project, American Stasis: Conflict, Order, and Leadership in Black Political Thought looks to the canon of black political thought to find ways of rethinking democratic politics and conflict and outlines how post-civil rights thinkers’ uses of classical materials provide alternatives to the assimilationist and separatist paradigms in US racial politics. From 2020-2021, he taught as a Lecturer at Seattle University. He joins the Kinder Institute as a Postdoctoral Fellow in American Political Thought and Constitutionalism.

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.

Originally from Salem, MO, Bailey Martin graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in May of 2023 with her B.A. in History and Constitutional Democracy, along with minors in Women’s and Gender Studies and Black Studies. She is the 2023 recipient of the Kinder Institute’s Exceptional Undergraduate Award. While pursuing the M.A. in Atlantic History and Politics, Bailey will assist with educational programming for the Kinder Institute’s Democracy Lab for first-year students. Her academic interests include the politics of slavery in the British West Indies, gender and class dynamics in Atlantic slave societies, and public history. Bailey also serves as the Executive Director of the Associated Students of the University of Missouri, a student-led political advocacy organization tasked with representing the needs of the 65,000 students across the UM System to members of the Missouri General Assembly.

Oli McCann is a rising senior from Liberty, Missouri, majoring in Constitutional Democracy and English. Aside from participating in the Kinder Scholars program, she is also a 2023-2024 Kinder Fellow, a member of the Kinder Institute Undergraduate Society Leadership Council, and the Membership/Communications Coordinator for the Mizzou chapter of It’s On Us. She is an avid reader of Stephen King books, an avid watcher of Christopher Nolan movies, and an aspiring political speechwriter.

Fellow (2014-2015), Scholar (2015)
Originally from Oak Forest, IL, Matt completed a degree in Political Science from Mizzou in 2016. After his time at MU, Matt worked with AmeriCorps and completed his MPA at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. Matt currently lives in Chicago and works as a Human Capital Consultant with Deloitte.

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

Originally from Montgomery, Texas, Elise Milburn is a rising junior majoring in Constitutional Democracy and History, with minors in Political Science, Latin American Studies, and Spanish. Her studies focus on the geopolitical entanglements of westward expansion and colonization from the 1600s to the early 1800s. During her time as a Kinder Undergraduate Fellow, she analyzed the usage of New Orleans as a political bargaining chip that would ultimately open the West to the United States. Outside of the Kinder Institute, Elise is an active member of SALT company and Anthem church. Post-graduation, she hopes to receive her M.A. in Atlantic History & Politics before applying to Ph.D. programs on the East Coast.

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.

Professor S. David Mitchell is a member of the University of Missouri School of Law faculty. He teaches Torts, Advanced Torts, Criminal Justice Administrations, Collateral Consequences of Sentencing, and Law & Society, and his research is on the collateral consequences of sentencing and ex-offender reentry. He earned his J.D. and Ph.D. (Sociology) from the University of Pennsylvania, and before joining the faculty at University of Missouri, he worked as a Scholar in Residence in the Sociology Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has served as a law clerk to the Honorable Andre M. Davis (D. Md.) and is currently a member of the Missouri Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He is also an Affiliate of the Black Studies and Sociology Departments.  Recently, he has served as the Chair of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Advisory Council.  In 2015, he was a recipient of the MU President’s Award for Community Engagement.

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.

Sophia Myers graduated from Mizzou in the Spring of 2023 with a B.A. in Political Science and a B.A. in Constitutional Democracy. Throughout her time at MU, she engaged in many international programs internationally as she pursued knowledge regarding the interactions of communities abroad. Outside of her studies, Sophia enjoys traveling, meeting up for coffee, hiking, and serving the community through various non-profits in the area.

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.

Nico Orantes is a rising senior at Mizzou, pursuing degrees in Economics and Strategic Communications. A practicing Catholic, Nico has an abiding interest in studying theology and Church history. After his time at Mizzou, he plans to return to his hometown of Nashville, TN, to work for the state and cheer on the Nashville Soccer Club.

Cristian Paladi is a rising junior from Chisinau, Rep. of Moldova. He is pursuing a double major in Political Science and Economics, with a minor in American Constitutional Democracy. He is also an Academic Coach at the Student Success Center and enjoys an array of extracurricular activities including calisthenics, chess, cycling, running, and reading. As someone who enjoys history and geography, Cristian is passionate about world affairs and political trends. Regarding fun activities, being active while listening to music is unrivaled.

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.

Greg Pekurney is a rising junior from North Richland Hills, Texas. He is majoring in Constitutional Democracy (U.S. & the World Concentration Area) and History, with minors in Political Science and Latin American Studies. He is actively involved around campus, serving as a Justice for the Residential Halls Association and as a TA for the Amish Communities class in the Peace Studies Department. In his free time, Greg likes to run, hike, watch sports, and build the occasional LEGO set when available. After completing his undergraduate studies, Greg plans on joining the Kinder Institute M.A. in Atlantic History & Politics before starting work in 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.

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.

MU Law and Kinder Institute Visiting Fellow in Constitutional Litigation
Haley Proctor joins the Kinder Institute and MU Law School as a jointly-appointed Visiting Fellow in Constitutional Litigation after having practiced law for seven years at Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, where she specializes in constitutional litigation and will remain of counsel. She previously served as a law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas on the United States Supreme Court and for Judge Thomas B. Griffith on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Her research focuses on civil procedure and constitutional law, and specifically on the rules that allocate and guide decision-making. She graduated from Yale Law School in 2012, and from Yale College, magna cum laude, in 2009.

A rising junior at Mizzou, Michael Rashford is majoring in Political Science and Constitutional Democracy. During his freshman year, he participated in the Kinder Institute Residential College and served as Vice President of the Wolpers Hall student government, and he was part of the Kinder Institute’s Society of Fellows program during his sophomore. In Summer 2022, Michael interned for the Missouri Solicitor General’s Office, working in special litigation. On campus, he plays on the club Ultimate Frisbee team, where he is acting Vice President, and in his free time, he enjoys running and considers himself an amateur barista. This summer in D.C. he will be interning with the House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means.

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.

Erin Reynolds is a sophomore at Mizzou, majoring in Constitutional Democracy and minoring in Psychology. Erin is a member of the Mizzou Club Tennis Team and the Phi Alpha Delta Pre-Law Fraternity, as well as captain of the Mizzou Mock Trial White Team. She plans to go to law school after graduation to pursue a career criminal law.

Sigi Ris is a rising senior studying Journalism, with an emphasis in reporting and writing, as well as Political Science. She is interested in both business and government reporting and has previously served as a podcast host and writer for Missouri Business Alert’s weekly podcast, Business Brief. This semester, she also reported on the state government beat for the Columbia Missourian. In her free time, Sigi enjoys listening to Taylor Swift and hanging out with her sisters in her service sorority, Little Sisters of the Gold Rose.

Catherine Rymph is a Professor of History and Dean of the MU Honors College. She came to Mizzou in 2000, after teaching at the University of Iowa and as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Greifswald in Germany. She specializes in recent U.S. history, especially U.S. women’s political history. She is the author of Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage to the Rise of the New Right (2006), a political history of feminism and conservatism within the Republican Party, and Raising Government Children: A History of Foster Care and the American Welfare State (2017). Professor Rymph regularly teaches courses on U.S. women’s political history, historical perspectives on child welfare and the family, and twentieth-century U.S. history.

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.

Elisha Schoor is a transferred senior from Kearney, Missouri, studying Constitutional Democracy and Economics. In addition to being a Kinder Scholar, he participated in the Kinder Fellows program during AY 2022-23, authoring an essay that will be published in the Journal on Constitutional Democracy. Elisha is currently President of the Mizzou Undergraduate Society of History and an avid member of the Mizzou Model United Nations club. While unclear on the translation, he hopes to turn the skills learned as an undergraduate into a career serving the public. Outside of school, Elisha loves to play games with friends, listen to Star Wars books, and build virtual railroad lines.

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 is a junior at Mizzou from Aurora, Illinois, pursuing a double major in History and Economics, with a minor in Political Science. C.J. is interested in History, Economics, Politics, and Law. On campus C.J. is a member of the Undergraduate History Society. In his free time, he enjoys gaming, reading, hiking, and watching TV and movies. After graduation, C.J. plans to attend grad school for history for a career in academia or go to law school to pursue work in the public or private sector.

Victoria Seever is a junior from Grain Valley, Missouri. She is studying to earn degrees in History and Constitutional Democracy, with a minor in Political Science. Victoria is an involved student at Mizzou, holding leadership roles such as President of the Mock Trial Team and open recruitment specialist for her sorority, Alpha Delta Pi. On top of her studies, she juggles three jobs, working as a tour guide for the university; as a saleswoman for Estée Lauder; and as a waitress at a sushi restaurant (she is very passionate about working jobs where she interacts with others and is able to get free food). During Summer 2022, she attended a study abroad program where she learned about ancient Greek societies. Outside of school, she enjoys spending time with her sister in the Pacific Northwest hiking and white water rafting, exploring new places, and trying new things.

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.

.

Quinn Sheppard is a rising junior from Lee’s Summit, Missouri, majoring in Constitutional Democracy and History, with a minor in Political Science. During her time at Mizzou, Quinn has interned with The Home Project in Athens, Greece, and at the State Historical Society of Missouri. Within the Kinder Institute, she has been a part of the Society of Fellows and Residential College programs. She currently conducts research through the Honors College and is an Associate Justice for MSA. During the 2023-24 school year, Quinn will serve as Director of the Mizzou chapter of It’s On Us and be an inaugural exchange student at University College London. In her spare time, she enjoys reading and drinking coffee, and especially enjoys when she can do both at the same time.

Originally from Kansas City, Sophy Silva graduated from Mizzou in May 2023 with a dual degree in Business Administration (Management) and Political Science, along with certificates in American Constitutional Democracy and Multicultural Studies. During her time as an undergraduate, Sophy worked with the Missouri State Treasurer’s Office as an Unclaimed Property Department intern and the Mizzou International Trade Center as a market research intern. She also served as a Student Ambassador for the College of Arts & Science, where she currently works as a Peer Mentor. After completing the M.A. program, Sophy plans on attending law school. Outside of her work and studies, Sophy enjoys cooking, fitness, attending concerts, 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.

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.

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, and conducted research on rehabilitation and intervention programs at the Center for Criminal and Juvenile Justice Priorities at Mizzou, and she 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 2017-2020, as the Institute’s fiscal officer.

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.

Peverill Squire is Professor of Political Science and holds the Hicks and Martha Griffiths Chair in American Political Institutions. He received his A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California-Berkeley. In recent years he has authored The Rise of the Representative: Lawmakers and Constituents in Colonial America (2017) and The Evolution of American Legislatures: Colonies, Territories and States, 1619-2009 (2012); co-authored Why States Matter (second edition, 2017); State Legislatures Today: Politics under the Domes (second edition, 2015); 101 Chambers: Congress, State Legislatures, and the Future of Legislative Studies (2005); and Who Runs for the Legislature? (2001); and co-edited Legislatures: Comparative Perspectives on Representative Assemblies (2002). Professor Squire’s research centers on American politics with an emphasis on legislatures, and for many years, he served as the senior editor of Legislative Studies Quarterly. He regularly teaches undergraduate courses on American state government and American legislatures and graduate courses on legislative institutions, the evolution of American legislatures, and American state politics.

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.

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.

Kiersten Traucht is a Mizzou sophomore from Marysville, Ohio, majoring in Political Science and Constitutional Democracy with minors in History and Psychology. She is a member of the University of Missouri’s Honors College and the Washington Society. She also participates in the college ministry program, The Neighborhood at Missouri United Methodist Church, and was involved in the Kinder Institute Residential College during her first year on campus. Kiersten stays busy working her job but in her free time enjoys reading and spending time with friends. The two things she won’t shut up about are Harry Potter and Social Contract theory. Upon graduation Kiersten is planning to attend law school and possibly pursue a career in the Federal Burau of Investigations.

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.

Peter Vallentyne is Florence G. Kline Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri. He writes on issues of liberty and equality in the theory of justice (and left-libertarianism in particular) and, more recently on enforcement rights (rights to protect primary rights). He was associate editor of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics and of Ethics; he was co-editor of Economics and Philosophy; and he is currently associate editor of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association and of Social Choice and Welfare. He edited Equality and Justice (2003, 6 volumes) and Contractarianism and Rational Choice: Essays on David Gauthier’s Morals by Agreement (1991), and he co-edited, with Hillel Steiner, The Origins of Left Libertarianism: An Anthology of Historical Writings and Left Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate (2000). He has held an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship and directed a National Endowments for the Humanities project on ethics across the curriculum. He can be contacted at Vallentynep@missouri.edu.

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.

Kent Waller is a rising junior from Aurora, Illinois, majoring in Political science and minoring in Spanish and History, with particular interest in Latin American history and politics. Kent is a part of the Mizzou Mock Trail Association and has done work for The Association of Latin American Students, and after returning from D.C., he will jump into the Kinder Institute’s Society of Fellows program. He plans to attend law school after graduation, and in his free time, he plays pick-up basketball and explores new restaurants in Columbia.

Christina E. Wells is the Enoch H. Crowder Professor of Law at the University of Missouri School of Law. Professor Wells received her BA cum laude from the University of Kansas and her JD cum laude from the University of Chicago School of Law, where she was Comment Editor of the Law Review. After graduating from law school, Professor Wells worked in private practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Chicago and Heller, Ehrman, White & McAullife in Los Angeles before joining the University of Missouri faculty in 1993. Professor Wells teaches Freedom of Speech, Administrative Law, Remedies, and Lawyering at MU, and she has served as a visiting professor and Fulbright Scholar in the Czech Republic at Masaryk and Palacky Universities and a visiting professor at the University of Illinois College of Law. She is a recipient of the Husch Blackwell Sanders Distinguished Faculty Award for excellence in teaching and the Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP Excellence in Research

Andrew West is a rising senior from Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He is majoring in Economics and is involved in the Phi Alpha Delta Pre-Law Fraternity and the St. Thomas More Newman Center. He is interested in politics, philosophy, and theology and enjoys reading, weightlifting, and running. Andrew was selected for the 2022 Federal Justice Summer Fellowship for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. He intends to pursue law school after graduation.

John Wigger is a Professor in the MU Department of History. He earned a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering from West Virginia University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Notre Dame, where he studied cultural-religious history in the United States. He has broad interests in the interconnections between Christianity and democracy in American history and serves as President of the Conference on Faith and History. Professor Wigger’s publications include Taking Heaven by Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular Christianity in America, 1770-1820 (1998), Methodism and the Shaping of American Culture, co-edited with Nathan Hatch (2001), American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists (2009), and most recently, PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire, published by Oxford University Press in August 2017. He regularly teaches courses on the social and cultural history of the United States.

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.

Lillian Williams graduated from the University of Missouri in 2023 with a B.A. in History, with an emphasis in Public History, a B.A. in Constitutional Democracy, and a minor in Political Science. She joins the Atlantic History and Politics cohort as the 2023-2024 Santa Fe Trail M.A. Fellow. As an undergraduate, Williams received the Mizzou ‘39 Award, served as President of the Undergraduate History Club, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. In her free time, she enjoys studying local history, trying new foods, and spending time outdoors.

Blake Willoughby earned his Bachelor of Arts in Communication at the University of Missouri in 2020, with a minor in Military Science. After he completed his undergraduate career, he commissioned as an Armor Officer for the U.S. Army, where he served as a Platoon Leader and Assistant Operations Officer. Once he completed his military service, he returned to Mizzou to pursue an M.A. in Atlantic History and Politics as well as a J.D. from Mizzou Law School. In his free time, Blake enjoys watching movies, writing, and biking.

Callie Woolfolk graduated from Mizzou in May of 2023 with a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies. She lives in Centralia, Missouri, where she is a wife to husband, Nathaniel, mother to Liam and Lily, and a military veteran, with a previous career of nearly twenty years as an intelligence analyst. When family life isn’t keeping her busy (and it usually is), she loves to read books of all kinds, draw and paint, have family movie nights, do all sorts of projects with her kids, including having a lot of adventures together. After completion of the M.A., Callie would love to continue on to law school.

Isabelle Wright is a third-year Mizzou student from Lindsborg, Kansas. She is majoring in Constitutional Democracy, with a minor in Criminology/Juvenile Justice. On campus, she is involved with the Phi Alpha Delta Pre-Law Society, is president of Mizzou Club Quidditch, and is a member of Mizzou’s chapter of Phi Mu, as well as a former member of the Kinder Institute Society of Fellows. She is interested in constitutional law, international relations, and history, and after graduation she hopes to serve in the Peace Corps and then attend law school.

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.

Isaac Yontz is a rising junior from Columbia, MO, studying government and politics through majors in Constitutional Democracy and Economics. On campus, he was a 2022-23 Kinder Institute Undergraduate Fellow and is the current tournament director of the Missouri Mock Trial Association. Off campus, Isaac enjoys hiking and learning French. Isaac will be a Jumpstart Corps member, primarily serving in Washington D.C.’s 7th and 8th wards, during Summer 2023.

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.