The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences has awarded funding to several faculty members through the Study in a Second Discipline Program, which gives professors time and support to push beyond their primary discipline and cultivate new scholarly tools.
The program provides funding so that faculty members can immerse themselves in a second discipline and bring fresh perspectives back to their research, teaching, and creative work. Below, meet the four recipients and see how each will bridge disciplines to expand the frontiers of their fields.
Jessica Brinkworth, anthropology, is the director of the Evolutionary Immunology and Genomics Laboratory, where she and her team discover how the human experience and our evolutionary past affect immune system function and health. In her current research supporting agricultural labor workers, Brinkworth intends to combine cell function and comorbidity data with transmission network data in order to understand how farm laborers’ working conditions may uniquely contribute to their susceptibility to respiratory diseases.
With the support of the LAS Study in a Second Discipline, she will gain new research methodological skills in epidemiology via the College of Applied Health Sciences’ online Master of Public Health degree.
Kalani Craig, history, specializes in digital and medieval history, applying an inherently interdisciplinary research perspective toward new discoveries in her home field. Craig is building upon foundational work in the humanities, leveraging technology to push the boundaries of what is possible in the field of history.
With the support of the the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, Craig will further study machine learning advancements to strengthen her technical foundation as she and her research team continue their current work uncovering the environmental history of the elephant ivory trade.
Eduardo Ledesma, Spanish and Portuguese, researches Spanish and Latin American film and media. His early academic foundation began at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he studied civil engineering as an undergrad before receiving a master’s in structural engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain. He also received master’s and PhD degrees from Harvard in Spanish and Portuguese and Romance languages and literatures, respectively.
In studying architecture, Ledesma further enhances his current scholarship in Spanish cinema and returns to Barcelona, this time combining his early academic pursuits with his extensive work in cultural studies.
John Schwenkler, philosophy, researches the philosophy of mind and action, ethics, and moral psychology. His current research project, a book on voluntary action, focuses on key ideas studied in philosophy and law.
To further elucidate the differences in legal and philosophical approaches to the topic, Schwenkler will undertake a year of formal study in the College of Law in order to accurately represent and further both fields of study.
Past awardees of this program include George Francis, professor emeritus of mathematics, who used his 1980-1981 LAS Study in a Second Discipline award to study illustration at the School of Art and Design. This opportunity allowed him to further his existing academic interests in visualizations of mathematical shapes and structures. His illustrations can be seen in “A Topological Picturebook,” published by Springer.
With the support of the LAS Study in a Second Discipline award, Jessica Greenberg, anthropology, pursued a master’s degree at the College of Law in 2017. In a press release for her most recent book, “Justice in the Balance” (2025), Greenberg mentioned how important it was to learn relate to her interviewees during her fieldwork at the European Court of Human Rights.
Brett Ashley Kaplan, comparative literature and the director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, applied her Study in a Second Discipline award to study creative writing in 2020-21. The resulting literary novel, “Rare Stuff” (2022), takes readers through a search for a missing person in real and magical universes. She is currently working on another book.
