Kathryn Jasper, Ph.D
Kathryn L. Jasper is currently an Associate Professor of History and Director of European Studies at Illinois State University. Dr. Jasper is also co-director of ISU Orvieto, a study abroad program in Italy, and she oversees the Latin program and Classical Studies minor in the Department of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures. Dr. Jasper earned a BA in archaeology and an MA in medieval history from the University of Arizona, and she holds a doctoral degree from the University of California at Berkeley in history and medieval studies. She is broadly trained in ancient and medieval history and her research and publications reflect that range. Dr. Jasper’s first monograph entitled Bounded Wilderness: Landscape and Land Management within the Congregation of Fonte Avellana, 1035-1393, studies monastic communities and how individuals relied on Late Antique models to build new institutions – relating to one another and to their physical environment in new ways – to pursue both ideological and political ends. The book’s inherent interdisciplinarity combines the fields of history, economic geography, archaeology, and environmental studies. Consequently, the project utilizes different tools to address its research questions. As the book nears completion, she is beginning new research on a first-century Roman nymphaeum and its environs as the Co-Director of the Valle Gianni Archaeological Project (Gradoli, Lazio, Italy).
Adam Franklin-Lyons, Ph.D
Bio coming soon!
Jesse Torgerson, Ph.D
Jesse W. Torgerson is Assistant Professors of Letters at Wesleyan University. He received his BA from Biola University, and both his MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His teaching and research interests are in the medieval period with a specialty in the East Roman Empire known as the Byzantine Empire. His current research project focuses on manuscript evidence for how (and to what political ends) historical knowledge was created and transmitted in the Byzantine empire of the ninth century, as found in the “world histories” of that period, known as “universal histories” or “chronographies”.
In the Fall of 2018 Prof. Torgerson’s Traveler’s Lab team worked with ISU students on our “Narrative and Geography in the Chronicle of Theophanes” project. Students were given a very basic introduction to MAXQDA and then worked to either (1) supplement our ongoing research; (2) create parallel research projects of their own by applying our methodology to other sources, or (3) apply MAXQDA in a different way.