Kate Lawrenz, '14
Lawrenz is originally from Seattle, but she knew that being close to D.C. would mean being close to the heart of American politics.
“I came in knowing I wanted to study political science,” Lawrenz says. “At first I thought I wanted to focus on domestic issues. After I took Dr. Stephen Long’s Introduction to International Relations class, I began to change my mind.”
Long noticed her interest in a specific issue — the conflict between North and South Sudan and the independence movement there. He encouraged her to do further research, focusing specifically on the possibility of conflict post-secession.
“I study international conflict, but I was not an expert on secession and the violence that can surround it,” Long says. “I learned a great deal from Kate's research, actually. I was able to help her connect it to other ideas in international relations and guide her on research design and execution, but all of the credit for the excellent result goes to her. It was easy to advise such a driven, talented researcher.”
Lawrenz applied for an Arts and Sciences Summer Fellowship, which allowed her to research for eight weeks this past summer under Long’s guidance. She was thrilled to receive it as a freshman — an opportunity she didn’t think she would have had at a bigger school.
While Lawrenz credits debate with helping her find her voice, it was her summer of research that gave her an outlet to express it. Her original goal was to write and present a 30-page paper, but as she and Long kept researching, 30 pages developed into 100 pages.
“We looked at five other secession cases in Europe, Asia and Africa and then compared them with the secession in Sudan,” Lawrenz says. “Based on our research, whether or not a seceded state has made an irredentist [territorial] claim based on ethnic similarities or historical significance is a decisive factor behind a peaceful or violent secession.”
The project ended up taking on a life of its own, especially because “some topics are just so complicated and interesting that they can’t be covered in 30 pages,” Long says. “We knew that pursuing all of the pieces of the research design would take a lot of writing, but it wasn't until the historical cases started taking shape as chapters that I understood how long it would actually be.
“In my view, Kate did a graduate-level project, and she just happens to still be an undergraduate.”
Long decided that, after all the research and effort, it would be a good idea for Lawrenz to take the next step with her project — defending her findings in front of Long and two other political science faculty, Jimmy D. Kandeh and Monti Datta.
“I ended up speaking about my research for 30 minutes and defending it for 45,” Lawrenz says. “But I also was able to pick the brains of three very brilliant people. That’s not an opportunity you’d have at many schools.”