I am the chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of South Dakota. In this capacity, I manage three undergraduate degree programs in political science, criminal justice and international studies; three graduate programs in public administration; and two research centers. I also serve as the Director of the W.O. Farber Center for Civic Leadership, and as executive secretary to the Farber Funds, the endowment for the Department.
As a political scientist, I study globalization and the global political economy. My research investigates how people create institutions to manage complex interactions between social, ecological, technological and physical systems—for example, the conservation of fisheries or the regulation of global financial networks. My publications explore how communities design rules, principles, norms and practices to deal with such unpredictable and chaotic interactions. This research contributes to several transdisciplinary fields: globalization theory, complex systems theory, and computational social science.
I teach seminars on the global political economy, globalization theory, statistics, quantitative methods, and social simulation. The doctoral students I have supervised have gone on to jobs in academia (Middlebury College, Western Carolina University, Hampton University, University of Detroit Mercy, and the University of the West Indies), government, non-profits and the private sector.
In my spare time, I like to play the piano and take photographs of patterns, from the torus of an anthill to the tessellations in medieval cobblestones. My photography isn’t very good, but I do try to capture visually the complex social-technological-ecological-physical interactions that motivate my research.
I welcome your inquiries concerning my scholarship, teaching, and administrative service.
David C. Earnest, Ph.D. 