Get to Know: Professor Studemeyer

Get to Know: Professor Studemeyer

Dr. Catherine Studemeyer joined the Global Affairs program faculty in the fall of 2016. As Assistant Director, Dr. Studemeyer heads the undergraduate Global Affairs program and, alongside her colleagues, advises Global Affairs majors and minors, promotes the Global Affairs program on campus, and helps students access the wide variety of resources open to Global Affairs majors, ranging from study abroad cohorts to internship opportunities and fellowship programs.  She also teaches GLOA101: Introduction to Global Affairs, a core course for Global Affairs majors and Mason core course option for non-majors. A human geographer by training and trade, she earned a PhD in Geography from the University of South Carolina, an MA in International Relations from the University of Miami (FL), and a BS in International Business and Business Management from Florida State University. Dr. Studemeyer comes to George Mason from Aberystwyth University in Wales where she was a Lecturer in Human Geography and taught courses on political geography, rural geography, global environmental issues, and research methods.

Dr. Studemeyer’s research focuses on the political geographies of young people who live in societies that are divided along ethnonational and ethnocultural lines. Her most recent research has centered upon post-Soviet nation-states in the European Union, specifically with regards to young adults and how they understand citizenship and national identity in the particular contexts of the nation-state as well as the universal contexts of a global and globalizing world. Based on ethnographic research in Tallinn, Estonia, the research project aimed at understanding how national belonging is understood in a multicultural Estonia that is negotiating a proud Estonian national heritage, a complicated Soviet past, and membership in the European Union. In addition to young people, Dr. Studemeyer also worked with secondary school teachers and administrators, government officials, and non-governmental organization members and explored how ideas about the meaning of citizenship and belonging in a “EU”ropean Estonia are presented to young people both in and outside of schools.