Dean Uta Poiger is pleased to welcome the following 29 new full-time faculty members to the College of Social Sciences and Humanities for the 2018-19 academic year:
Angela Herbert
Assistant Academic Specialist in American Sign Language
Angela Herbert has worked as an ASL/English interpreter both in educational and freelance settings including K-12, post-secondary, medical, mental health, performing arts, conferences, and twelve-step programs. Her teaching specializations include American Sign Language-English interpreting, interpreting persuasive, narrative, and research texts.
Aysen Tanyeri-Abur
Associate Teaching Professor of Economics
Aysen Tanyeri-Abur’s expertise and research interests lie in development economics, with a focus on economic analysis of food and development policy, global/regional/local food systems, and agricultural investment. Her teaching specializations include agricultural and applied economics, international development, food policy, and resource development.
Boris Yelin
Assistant Teaching Professor of Spanish
Boris Yelin’s teaching specializations include Spanish as foreign language, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, and language acquisition. His research on multilingualism and psycholinguistics helps him explore how the mind works when several languages are involved as well as how to help students use their multiple languages or even their native languages to forge strong connections and unpack languages to promote more efficient learning.
Carolin Fuchs
Teaching Professor of German and Coordinator of Online Teaching and Learning
Carolin Fuchs’ research interests lie at the intersection of technology and language education, with a focus on virtual exchanges (telecollaboration), learner autonomy, online teaching, and task design. Her teaching specializations include teaching German and English as a foreign language, technology-based language teaching and learning, language instruction and teacher education, and applied linguistics.
Claudia Haupt
Associate Professor of Law and Political Science
Claudia Haupt’s research is situated at the intersection of the First Amendment, health law, and torts in the context of professional speech. Her research interests include constitutional law and comparative constitutional law as well as law and technology.
Colin Brown
Assistant Teaching Professor of Political Science
Colin Brown’s current research agenda is focused on electoral and institutional rules that have large, independent, and often unintended effects on the descriptive representation of immigrants and their descendants, particularly in Western Europe. His recent work has identified conditions under which the same rules may offer advantages to immigrant minorities while compounding women’s under-representation (or vice-versa), looking at variations in German, Dutch and French local election laws.
Daniel Cuenca
Visiting Lecturer of Spanish and Portuguese
Daniel Cuenca has taught Spanish and Portuguese language and literatures for many years at multiple universities across Massachusetts. His area of doctoral specialization lies at the intersection of cultural studies, film theory and political philosophy, and focuses specifically on the (de-)construction of the fictions of First and Third Worlds as textual functions of mass media.
Donghee Jo
Assistant Professor of Economics
Donghee Jo is an affiliated faculty member of the Network Science Institute. He specializes in political economy and media economics. The current primary focus of his research is the causes, consequences, and potential remedies of political polarization.
Emily Clough
Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs
Emily Clough studies comparative politics and the political economy of development, with a regional focus on India. Her research and teaching interests focus on public service delivery, state capacity and government performance, civil society, democracy and political accountability, education, bureaucratic behavior and corruption, inequality and distributive politics, the ethics and politics of global philanthropy, and multi-method research design.
Geoff Boeing
Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs
Geoff Boeing is an affiliated faculty member in the Network Science Institute. His research revolves around city planning, urban form, and data science. Recent projects have focused on the nature and character of urban street networks around the world, and how data availability shapes our understanding of housing affordability.
Hilary C. Robinson
Associate Professor of Law and Sociology
Hilary Robinson specializes on legal approaches to science and technology studies, disruptive technological innovation, media, Uber, and genomic biotech. Her current research concerns the interaction between technological change and legal decision-making in the construction of social order, particularly as legal institutions engage in decision-making about technological things and practices.
Karin Maxey
Visiting Lecturer in World Languages Center, Writing Program
Karin Maxey’s teaching specializations include German and writing. Her research interests lie primarily in applied linguistics and second language learning, and include beginning learners’ reading development, cultural learning, curriculum design, assessment, and the development of learners’ second language identities.
Jill Dupree
Assistant Teaching Professor of Economics
Jill Dupree’s research interests are in economic development and global economic history. Her teaching specializations include economic development and global economic history, macroeconomics, and international finance.
Julie Garey
Assistant Teaching Professor of Political Science
Julie Garey has a passion for simulations and other in-class experiential learning opportunities. Current research projects include examinations of the effects of alliance relationships on U.S. foreign policy and national security decision-making. Other research interests include alliance behavior, coalition warfare, American foreign policy and national security policy, and the evolution of U.S. military strategy.
Katy Shorey
Assistant Teaching Professor of Philosophy
Katy Shorey’s teaching specializations include applied ethics, philosophy of science, social and political philosophy, logic, and philosophy of religion. Her research focuses on criteria for evaluating the success of scientific explanations, particularly how to articulate a general account of explanation that specifies what is necessary for explanation, and the criteria for judging between better and worse explanations.
Laura Beerits
Assistant Teaching Professor of English
Laura Beerits’ research and teaching interests include student writing practices, teaching assistant pedagogy, and the contemporary American coming-of-age novel.
Madhavi Venkatesan
Assistant Teaching Professor of Economics
Madhavi Venkatesan’s present academic interests include the integration of sustainability into the economics curriculum. Her teaching specializations include economics, finance and sustainability, labor and environmental economics, and economic history.
Margot Abels
Visiting Lecturer of Human Services; Sociology and Anthropology; Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Margot Abels’ teaching specializations include gender and sexuality, human services, and sociology in the area of reproductive justice. Her scholarly work is rooted in medical sociology and inequality studies with interpretation and analysis intended to influence application, practice and change.
Mark Wells
Visiting Lecturer of Philosophy and Religion
Mark Wells’ teaching specializations include ethics and medical ethics. He primarily writes on issues in applied ethics and politics, and he is interested in how ethical theorizing can inform personal, organizational, and public policy.
Matt Lee
Teaching Professor of Human Services
Matt Lee’s research has examined campus climate and advocacy for diversity/inclusion in the classroom, and Asian American mental health as it relates to experiences of microaggressions that may be associated with phenotype or socialization. He has taught courses in cross-cultural psychology, study abroad/ethnic identity and conflict (Romania, Germany, Poland, and Croatia), introduction to psychology, lifespan development, developmental psychology, Asian American identity, and psychology and literature.
Megan Denver
Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Megan Denver’s research interests include criminal record stigma, employment and recidivism, credentialing decisions for people with criminal records, and desistance. She uses a variety of methods to address her research questions and integrates criminological theory with policy.
Megan Goodwin
Visiting Lecturer of Philosophy and Religion; Program Director of Sacred Writes
Megan Goodwin is a scholar of gender, sexuality, race, and contemporary American minority religions. Her teaching specializations include gender and religion.
Risa Kitagawa
Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs
Risa Kitagawa’s research interests include the politics of transitional justice, state violence, post-conflict processes, and human rights, with a regional focus on Central America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her current book project uses econometric and experimental methods to investigate transitional justice policymaking in post-conflict states and its impact on political reconciliation.
Robert Cross
Assistant Teaching Professor of History and International Affairs
Robert Cross’ broad range of research interests includes Britain, Spain, and early modern Europe, as well as the Atlantic world, empire, and all things transnational. He has extensive teaching experience in a range of subjects, from medieval through modern Europe, the history of political thought from the ancient world to the present, world history, international affairs, and comparative colonialism and empire.
Robert Triest
Chair and Professor of Economics
Robert Triest is an applied economist whose research focuses on labor economics and public policy. His recent work focuses on the intersection of economic circumstances and educational outcomes, as well as the impact of long-term unemployment on household finances.
Shytierra Gaston
Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Shytierra Gaston’s research and teaching expertise centers on two broad areas: the intersection of race/ethnicity, crime, and criminal justice and the U.S. correctional system. She uses quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies to investigate research topics related to the treatment of people of color during criminal justice processing, the disparate impact of the criminal justice system on communities of color, the reentry experiences of inmates, and the collateral consequences of incarceration for formerly-incarcerated persons and their families and communities.
Silvia Prina
Associate Professor of Economics
Silvia Prina is a development economist interested in understanding the behavior of poor households for the purpose of uncovering potential strategies to improve their lives. She is currently working on several field experiments in Mexico and Latin America, Nepal, Tanzania, Uganda, and the U.S.
Tiffany Joseph
Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, and International Affairs
Tiffany Joseph’s research explores the micro-level consequences of public policy on individuals, immigrants’ health and healthcare access, comparative frameworks of race and migration in the Americas, and the experiences of faculty of color and women in academia.
Vanessa Wei
Assistant Teaching Professor of Chinese
As an educator, Vanessa Wei strives to provide an immersive environment for students to gain and develop proficiency in Chinese by using a communicative and tasked-based teaching approach. As a researcher, she conducts classroom-based research on effective teaching methods to improve practice, particularly on vocabulary pedagogy. Her broader research interests include multiliteracies and integrating digital literacy with language instruction.
