Jackson Beauregard
SPA, CLEG
AU Honors

Jackson Beauregard is a Research Director at a nonprofit, Rise Against Hate, and an O'Connor Scholar at The Council of State Governments. He is very interested in the correlation between substance abuse and socioeconomic status. Sequentially, Jackson recently studied abroad in Ireland, as a cultural ambassador under the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship, to further his understanding of this. He hopes to complete a master's thesis on how the United States can better address substance abuse in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities through the Mitchell or Fulbright scholarship. He hopes to use his research to advocate for positive and effective policies to help those suffering from addiction, who come from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. 

Collin Coil
CAS, Mathematics & Data Science
AU Honors

Collin Coil is an avid researcher and works on several interdisciplinary teams at American University. He has presentations and publications on a variety of research topics, including gender representation in congressional witness panels, generative artificial intelligence, and DNA digital data storage. Additionally, he is a research assistant for an international finance research project. This year, Collin was one of AU's nominees for the Goldwater Scholarship, and he was chosen as an Undergraduate Scholar by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. In the fall, he will apply to doctoral programs to focus on artificial intelligence. In his free time, Collin competes for the AU rowing team and serves as a member of the CAS Dean's Student Advisory Council. 

Catherine Hou
CAS, Philosophy & Psychology

Catherine Hou is part of the psychology honors program and a student in the BA/MA program for Philosophy and Social Policy. They are currently working with Dr. Arthur Shapiro's lab to conduct psychological research into how illusions affect our perceptions of time and space. Their philosophical interests have focused on feminist philosophy, moral psychology, and digital ethics. They will be presenting independent research on the application of care ethics to game design this spring. They are also scheduled to present both psychological and philosophical research at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research and their research on obsession at the Central American Philosophical Association Meeting. They were the recipient of the Literature Department's 2022 Louise M. Young Memorial Prize. 

Talia Marshall
CAS, Literature & American Studies

Talia Marshall is a senior whose research lies at the intersection of queer, disability, and literary studies and is especially interested in the concepts of time and language. In 2021, she received AU Summer Scholars funding to begin her project “Neuroqueer Time: Exploring Temporal Intersections.” The project has also been supported with a WGSS Department Award for Feminist Research and a Provost Award for research. This past January, Talia traveled to San Francisco to present this work at the Modern Language Association’s annual conference. She has also worked with AU's CTRL to update classroom accessibility standards, and currently enjoys being a Core Leader for an introductory literature course on desire and identity. Talia feels especially fortunate for the support she has received from Professors Aho, Marsh, Brideoake, and Christensen throughout her undergraduate career. 

Abigail Martinez
CAS, Literature

Abigail Martinez is a proud Chicana writer whose work is primarily inspired by past, present, and future social issues, focusing on Latine stories. In the past, she has dedicated herself to promoting quality education and care for students within marginalized communities through volunteering in her community. She is currently studying at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in the hopes of immersing herself in a new and fresh culture while developing and expanding her writing style and voice. For now and in the future, she hopes to continue researching and writing about social issues regarding Latine studies to highlight and bring much-deserving attention to Latine stories in the literary industry. 

Maia McCall
CAS, African American and African Diaspora Studies

Maia McCall is a Research Assistant to Dr. Orisanmi Burton, conducting work for his upcoming book. She previously conducted research with Dr. Christina Juhasz-Wood, and currently sits on the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Cultural Studies Faculty Council as a Student Representative. Her research broadly examines our most recent epoch of Anti-Colonial insurgency and its impact on Black cultural-intellectual production. This includes Decolonial Phenomenology, Afro-Caribbean Humanism, Black Existentialism, Afro-Surrealism, Fanonian Sociogeny, and other Schools of Thought coming out of revolutionary struggles in the Caribbean, US, and West Africa. Outside of research, she is an organizer with ANSWER Coalition. After graduating, she intends on pursuing her PhD in Africana Studies with a focus on questions of Being probed by Anti-Colonial struggles in Grenada, Jamaica, and Cuba.