Projects

Infrastructure + Inequality: The Prairie Island Nuclear Plant

Project Director: Alix Johnson, International Studies

This site is the end result of a semester-long project that asked students to produce new research on the Prairie Island Nuclear Plant. Situated in Red Wing, Minnesota, on the Mississippi River and adjacent to the Prairie Island Indian Community, the plant concretized many themes we explored in course readings, including the uneven exercise of “infrastructural power” (Laleh Khalili) and the challenges of practicing “infrastructural citizenship” (Deb Chachra). Students worked in small groups, each practicing different methodologies (archival research, policy research, environmental research and media analysis), then produced public-facing representations of their findings, embedded in an interactive map.

Public Health in Latin America: A Research Encyclopedia

Project Director: Eric Carter, Geography

This web resource was originally developed by students at Macalester College, as part of the seminar course Public Health in Latin America in 2019.

Network of Thrones

Project Director: Andrew Beveridge, Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science

In Spring 2016, Math Horizons, a publication of the Mathematical Association of America, published an introductory article about Network Science that I wrote with Jie Shan, one of my former students. We used the techniques of network science to explore the complex social and narrative dynamics of Westeros and Essos. This fantasy world was a great playground for explaining network analysis techniques, which require combining quantitative analysis with “domain expertise.”

Inspired by the warm reception that our article received, we’ve returned to the Seven Kingdoms to provide a more authoritative analysis. This site contains the results.