Project Team

Stanley Dubinsky

Stanley Dubinsky

Primary Researcher

My primary area of research is syntactic theory and the syntax-semantics interface. I have produced three books, four edited volumes, and several dozen articles and book chapters on a variety of topics – largely on the syntax and semantics of various languages, including English, Japanese, Korean, Bulgarian, Hebrew, and two Bantu languages (Chichewa and Lingala). My 2004 Blackwell book, co-authored with William D. Davies, is titled The Grammar of Raising and Control: A Course in Syntactic Argumentation, and was followed in 2007 by an edited collection with Springer, New Horizons in the Analysis of Control and Raising. My two most recent co-authored books are Understanding Language through Humor (2011, Cambridge University Press), and Language Conflict and Language Rights: Ethnolinguistic Perspectives on Human Conflict (2018, Cambridge University Press).

Michael Gavin

Michael Gavin

Primary Researcher

I write and teach about literature, intellectual history, and digital humanities. Broadly speaking, I'm interested in the ways that technology affects communication. My first book, The Invention of English Criticism, 1650-1760 (Cambridge University Press, 2015) describes the popularization of literary debate over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This book was motivated by a desire to understand how, given the immutable fact that critics never agree and about much of anything, we can know much of anything about literature and sometimes even come to a shared understanding. Since completing that book, my research has expanded this line of inquiry into the present, asking how new forms of digital writing might make possible new ways of thinking and talking about literature and history. I’m particularly interested in computational linguistics, network science, geospatial modeling, and agent-based simulation.

Harvey Starr

Harvey Starr

Primary Researcher

Harvey Starr's research and teaching interests include theories and methods in the study of international relations, war and international conflict, geopolitics and diffusion analyses, and domestic influences on foreign policy (revolution; democracy). His current research interests include the causes and consequences of failed states; geopolitics and the use of Geographic Information Systems; the democratic peace; and the theory and methods of necessary conditions. He joined the faculty at the University of South Carolina in 1989 as the Dag Hammarskjold Professor in International Affairs, serving as chair of his department from 1998 until 2006. While formally retired in June 2014, he remains an Associate of Walker Institute of International and Area Studies, Consulting Faculty in the Jewish Studies Program, and a Rule of Law Collaborative Faculty Member. He is author or co-author of 18 books and monographs, and almost one hundred journal articles and book chapters. His most recent books are World Politics: the Menu for Choice, 10th edition (Cengage 2013) co-authored with Bruce Russett and David Kinsella, On Geopolitics (Paradigm 2013), Zaryab Iqbal and Harvey Starr, State Failure in the Modern World (Stanford University Press 2015), and Harvey Starr and Stanley Dubinsky, editors, The Israeli Conflict System: Analytic Approaches (Routledge 2015).

Chin-Tser Huang

Chin-Tser Huang

Senior Consultant

Dr. Chin-Tser Huang is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of South Carolina at Columbia. He received the B.S. degree in Computer Science and Information Engineering from National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, in 1993, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Sciences from The University of Texas at Austin in 1998 and 2003, respectively. His research interests include network security, network protocol design and verification, and distributed systems. He is the director of the Secure Protocol Implementation and Development (SPID) Laboratory at the University of South Carolina. He is the author (along with Mohamed Gouda) of the book “Hop Integrity in the Internet,” published by Springer in 2005. His research has been funded by DARPA, AFOSR, AFRL, NSF, and NEH. He is a recipient of the USAF Summer Faculty Fellowship Award and of the AFRL Visiting Faculty Research Program Award in 2008-2019. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and ACM.

Elaine Chun

Elaine Chun

Elaine W. Chun is an associate professor of English and Linguistics at the University of South Carolina. Her research examines how ideologies of language, race, and gender mediate language practices in the United States. Drawing on methods of interactional analysis and ethnography, she has primarily investigated multiethnic youth linguistic practices and stereotypical Asian linguistic representations in both face-to-face and social media contexts. Her work has appeared in Language in Society, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Pragmatics, Language & Communication, Applied Linguistics, and Discourse & Society. 

Kaitlyn Smith

Kaitlyn Smith

Managing Editor

Kaitlyn Smith is a PhD student at the University of South Carolina specializing in the literature of the American South from the Civil War to civil rights period. At U of SC, she teaches first-year English, helps manage the Language Conflict Project, and facilitates LGBTQ+ Safe Zone trainings for faculty and students. Her areas of interest are southern literature, race, technology studies, digital humanities, and mapping. Her article, “‘A Fellow Feeling for Lads’: Civil War Nursing and Queer Family-Making in Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches,” recently appeared in Pacific Coast Philology. Over the summer, she served as the 2019 Eudora Welty Fellow, and she is currently preparing to write a dissertation on race, space, and technology in the literature of the American South.

Gareth Rees-White

Gareth Rees-White

Gareth Rees-White is in his 5th year of a Rhet/Comp PhD. His studies are focused on Trans-Atlantic Composition. Outside of academia he loves horror films, satire, and The Bachelor, and has taught specialized classes in two of these. He spends most of his time walking his dog, playing video games, and reading graphic novels.

Elena Galkina

Elena Galkina

Elena Galkina is a graduate assistant conducting research for the Language Conflict Project.

Vivian D'Souza

Vivian D'Souza

Vivian D'Souza is a sophomore at the University of South Carolina, majoring in Computer Science with a minor in Spanish. She has been working with the project since freshman year. Her current research focuses on Chinese Dialects in Singapore and exploring Lexical Similarity through data analysis. Vivian is also interested in natural language process, artificial intelligence, and edu-tech.

Aidan Thomason

Aidan Thomason

Aidan Thomason is a junior International Studies and History major at the University of South Carolina. Her academic focuses are forced migration and international education, as well as Spanish and Portuguese. At UofSC, she is the executive producer of the Seeking Refuge podcast and an LSC Peer Leader. 

Victoria Halsey

Victoria Halsey

Victoria Halsey is in the class of 2024 at the University of South Carolina Honors College, majoring in international studies with concentrations in Asian studies and international human rights and minors in psychology and linguistics. She participates in a podcast called Seeking Refuge, sharing the stories of refugees and those trying to help them. In the future, she plans to be an international human rights attorney and hopes that her work on the project will bring greater awareness to the intersection of language and human rights.

Mia Bickham

Mia Bickham

Mia Bickham is an undergraduate student at the University of South Carolina pursuing a bachelor's in computer science. She discovered a passion for coding by chance in a school-wide coding hour and subsequently took relevant AP courses at her high school, leading her to pursue a university degree. Her passion for Japan began in elementary school, with anime as the gateway. Since high school, she self-studied Japanese but desired more formal practice and is now working towards a Japanese minor and a study abroad. Her passion for linguistics sprung from middle school, particularly in analyzing Shakespeare's work. She grew an interest in linguistics specifically to aid her in her studies with Japanese. Currently, she is also an active member of her university's anime (Nashi) and Japanese Appreciation Club.

Jackson Ginn

Jackson Ginn

Jackson Ginn is a freshman computer science major with a minor in mathematics. His research is on linguistic distance in the Language Conflict Project.

Alaina Littlefield

Alaina Littlefield

Alaina Littlefield is a student researcher and writer for the Language Conflict Project.

Isabel Sans

Isabel Sans

Isabel Sans is in the class of 2025 at the University of South Carolina Honors College, majoring in History and Spanish. In addition to writing for the Language Conflict Project, she edits at The Daily Gamecock and is a member of the Student Community for Archives, Libraries, and Museums. In her free time, she enjoys reading and collecting old books.

Dan Shea

Dan Shea

Dan Shea is a student researcher and writer for the Language Conflict Project.

Emma O'Keeffe

Emma O'Keeffe

Emma O'Keeffe is a student researcher and writer for the Language Conflict Project.

Sara Westerhold

Sara Westerhold

Sara Westerhold is a student researcher and writer for the Language Conflict Project.

Lex Whalen

Lex Whalen

Lex is a computer science major studying lexical similarity on the Language Conflict Project.

Jess O'Brien

Jess O'Brien

Jess is a global studies major and staff writer for the Language Conflict Project.

Ada Stiglbauer

Ada Stiglbauer

Ada Stiglbauer is a staff writer for the Language Conflict Project.

Mary Elizabeth Rudd

Mary Elizabeth Rudd

Mary Elizabeth Rudd is a staff writer for the Language Conflict Project.