Geoff Harkness, assistant professor of sociology, recently presented a research article at Development in Question, a conference held at Cornell University and sponsored by Cornell’s Department of Development Sociology.

Geoff Harkness, assistant professor of sociology at Morningside College, recently presented a research article at Development in Question, a conference held at Cornell University and sponsored by Cornell’s Department of Development Sociology.

Harkness collaborated on the article, titled “Professional Dissonance: Freedom and Surveillance in Qatar’s Universities and Museums,” with Peggy Levitt, chair of the sociology department at Wellesley College and co-director of the Transnational Studies Initiative at Harvard University.

The article is based on field research in Qatar, where Harkness and Levitt interviewed college professors and museum curators and directors who had been trained in Western institutions but worked under Qatar’s restricted rights and freedoms. The article explores how the professional values of the educators and museum staff were at odds with their authoritarian host.

Harkness presented an earlier version of this research last spring at a conference at Brown University.

Harkness has taught at Morningside College since 2014. He received his doctorate from Northwestern University.