Save the Date

10 am, Intro and Participatory Research Methods in Rural Colombia – Angela D. Nichols, PhD: Description to be announced.

10:30 am, The Story of U.S. – Marquese McFerguson, PhD: McFerguson is an Assistant Professor of Intercultural Communication and Performance Studies within the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies at Florida Atlantic University. His research and teaching examine how individuals in society communicate and perform identity across a diverse number of cultural intersections. His scholarship is centered on building bridges of understanding across cultures by examining how identities are produced/portrayed by media makers and interpreted/performed by media audiences. His research about representation and media-created scripts is guided by aesthetic and narrative sensibilities. Dr. McFerguson is also an award-winning slam poet/storyteller and teaching artist who has performed at academic institutions and performance venues throughout the United States and United Kingdom.

11 am, Warrior in Gardens & Gardeners in War: Who Shoots, Who Doesn’t, & Who Can Do Both - Gabriel Cesar, Ph.D.: Cesar is an associate professor in the School of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Florida Atlantic University. His research centers on juvenile justice, social support, and violence. He is currently developing a series of simulated reality experiments to examine violence prevention through self-defense. Gabriel’s work also encounters the intersection of social work and criminology. Child welfare intervention has profound implications for parental rights as well as the rights of children. To that end, Gabriel has collaborated with system-involved children and families for over a decade as a researcher, mentor, and volunteer to seek solutions through research, policy, and practice.

11:30 am, Justice and K-Pop in Indian Himalayan Borderlands: Inter-Asian Media Consumption as Social Protest – Jaqueline H. Fewkes, Ph.D.: Fewkes is committed to anthropological research and teaching that centers peace, justice, and human rights (PJHR) issues to celebrate the dignity of all human experiences, while rejecting essentialized and reductionist notions of what PJHR can/should be on a global level. Her work on sacred spaces in the Maldives and the United States centers marginalized voices to promote inclusive understandings of religious experiences. Dr. Fewkes' most recent project focuses on the social significance of K-media consumption among the minority youth of India. Her work has been supported by grants and awards from organizations such as the Library of Congress, Social Science Research Council, American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, Association for Asian Studies, International Research and Exchanges Board, and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

12 pm, English for Memory and Peace – Andrés Ramírez, Ph.D.: Ramírez is an Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Florida Atlantic University. His research focuses on translanguaging, Systemic Functional Linguistics, genre-based pedagogy, Reading to Learn, and multilingual literacy. Dr. Ramírez has published in leading journals and edited volumes on language education, literacy, and bilingual education. He is the developer of Genre Translanguaging, a pedagogical approach that integrates translanguaging, Systemic Functional Linguistics, and genre pedagogy to support equity for multilingual learners’ language and their literacy development.

1 pm, Resiliency in Action: A PhotoVoice Project with Students Attending College While Homeless – Kaila Witowski, Ph.D.: Witkowski, MSW, MPH, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Administration at Florida Atlantic University. Her work focuses on applying visual and community-based research methods, such as PhotoVoice, to capture the lived experiences of different community groups in South Florida, including persons experiencing homelessness, persons living with HIV/AIDS, and first responders. Her work has been published in top journals in the field of public and emergency management, including Public Administration Review and the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, and covered by major media outlets, including WPLG Local 10 HealthCAST. She has also received funding from different academic and government agencies, including the Natural Hazards Center and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

1:30 pm, Culture, Citizenship, and Community Connections – Rina Bousalis, Ph.D.: Bousalis is an Associate Professor of Social Studies Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Her research interests include immigration, multiculturalism, human rights, U.S. history, Florida history, and citizenship education. Dr. Bousalis was previously a high school social studies teacher in Tampa, FL, where she taught U.S. and World history, American government, AP human geography, and sociology. She has co-authored a book on the integration of social studies into other disciplines and authored a book on the Florida Sponge War, an overlooked historical event based on culture and competition. She has written articles for local to global peer-reviewed journals and presented at state, national, and international conferences such as in Belfast, Northern Ireland; Nicosia, Cyprus; Kyoto, Japan; Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Athens, Greece. Dr. Rina Bousalis can be contacted at rbousalis@fau.edu.

2:30 pm, Mutiny in History – Douglas T. McGetchin, Ph.D.: McGetchin specializes in the modern history of international connections between Europe and South Asia. His publications include The Boycott or the Bullet: A Global History of Debates over Nonviolence since 1850 (2026); German-Speaking Jewish Refugees in Asia (2025); Modern Germany: A Global History (2023); Gendered Encounters between Germany and Asia (2016); Transcultural Encounters between Germany and India in the 19th and 20th Centuries (2014); Indology, Indomania, Orientalism (2009); Sanskrit and "Orientalism": Indology and Comparative Linguistics in Germany, 1750-1958 (2004).