Maddie Shorman
Phd Student, the university of texas at austin
Maddie Shorman is a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin in the LBJ School for Public Affairs. Her juxtaposition between religion, race, and politics punctuates her research and writing. Maddie believes that education is one of the most transformative ways to engage with the world and seeks to impact academia through her dedication to empathetic teaching and critical research.
Teaching
Maddie began her Master’s tenure as a teaching assistant for the gateway undergraduate course at the Boren College of International Studies at the University of Oklahoma; she was then appointed head teaching assistant for the undergraduates at OU within the College of International Studies. At her current institution, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, Maddie is a teaching assistant at the graduate level for the qualitative research methods course for first-year doctoral students.
During her initial semester as a teaching assistant, Maddie realized that her career goal was to invest in the thoughtful development of students during their formative years in college. Her passion is teaching students to engage critically and empathetically with the world around them. She profoundly believes in the value of the academy and the kind of problem-solving skills that it can instill through sustained investment in students' futures.
CURRENT PROJECT
Maddie’s dissertation explores how the Catholic Church shaped U.S. foreign policy in Latin America during the Cold War—not through backroom deals or official diplomacy, but through interpretation. She asks: When the U.S. sent its policies into the world, how did religious leaders read them? And what happened when they pushed back? Drawing on ideas from Machiavelli and the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, Maddie develops a new approach to understanding power—one that focuses not only on what policies say, but also on how they are received, challenged, and reshaped by others.
At its heart, this research asks a simple but powerful question: Who gives power its moral weight? In answering it, Maddie is also building a new method for studying foreign policy—one that treats strategy not as a one-way command, but as a living text, shaped by interpretation, resistance, and moral dialogue.