Intern Spotlight: Alex Wellman
Internship Supports Research and Career Exploration
The HRI-Mellon Legal Humanities Research Group is a multi-generational team of faculty, post-doctoral and graduate students, and undergraduate interns, all exploring research at the intersection of humanities and the law. We spoke with Legal Humanities intern Alex Wellman, who is graduating this May with an Economics and Political Science degree. He is hoping to attend law school in the future.
Interview by Elena Vara, David F. Prindable Intern
What interested you in applying for this internship?
I was super interested in applying to this internship, first of all, because I had a strong passion to eventually go to law school. I thought this would give me excellent insight into how law and the humanities interact. Throughout the entire internship, I've seen how different humanities disciplines have a hand in crafting how the legal system works and is implemented.
What aspects of the work or research motivate and excite you?
It's been really been nice for me to read a piece of literature, interpret it on my own, and then go talk with other undergraduates and pre- and post-doctoral students. I can see what their interpretation and take on the piece was. I like to see how different people approach these issues from different perspectives and disciplines. It gives me a well-rounded view of what we've been doing in the internship.
How this internship experience support HRI’s legal humanities fellowship program?
We're putting on a symposium and we're helping to bring speakers in, and other students, which is a huge role that we're playing at the moment. My project will be looking into more of the legal aspects of social media algorithms and how we should conceptualize responsibility, and the legal pathways for justice and recourse if harm is done through the social media algorithms.
What past experiences (courses, other internships, extracurriculars) have prepared you for this internship?
This internship has been pretty reading heavy, so being able to use skills from my political science classes on how to dissect pieces of literature and get to the core meaning quickly has really helped me in this fellowship. Some of my upper-level economics courses have also helped, in terms of giving me a different perspective, one rooted more in empirical work, which has been nice.
This internship is part of a research group that includes faculty as well as pre-doctoral and post-doctoral scholars. So how is working with these researchers of different stages influenced your future goals?
It's interesting to see people at all different stages of getting a PhD. The most influential part has come from seeing the pre doctoral students and postdocs give mock job talks or mock presentations. That's given me good insight into what type of research I'd be doing if I were to pursue a PhD and how it looks to present that type of work to others. That has had a big influence on me. It's opened my eyes to see that maybe I do want to pursue some type of graduate coursework, and that can look like a PhD, instead of law school.
All are welcome to attend the 2022 Legal Humanities Undergraduate Research Symposium on April 29, 2022.