Institute Community (participants, directors, faculty, research assistants)
Project Director(s):
Liza Weinstein (Department Chair; Associate Professor of Sociology) researches and teaches on cities and globalization, urban political economy, and the politics of informality with a regional focus on India. Her work has appeared in Politics & Society, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and City & Community, and numerous edited volumes.
Serena Parekh (Professor of Philosophy and the director of the Politics, Philosophy, and Economics Program) co-edits the journal, Feminist Philosophy Quarterly. She is the author of three books, including her most recent book, No Refuge: Ethics and the Global Refugee Crisis (Oxford 2020), which won the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award, the Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award, and was a finalist for the PROSE award for Philosophy from the Association of American Publishers.
Angel Nieves (Professor of Africana Studies, History, and Digital Humanities; Director of Public Humanities) begins his new role as Director of Northeastern’s Humanities Center in July 2022. Dr. Nieves’s scholarship focuses on the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, social justice, and technology in the U.S. and South Africa.
Lecturers and Visiting Faculty:
Cameron Blevins (Associate Professor Clinical Teaching Track)of History at CU Denver) studies digital humanities, spatial history, and the nineteenth-century United States. Cameron is a former assistant professor of history at Northeastern University. Cameron’s work has appeared in the Journal of American History, Modern American History, and Digital Humanities Quarterly. Some of his broader interests include geography, gender history, and information visualization.
Kate Derickson (McKnight Land-Grant Professor Associate Professor of Government, Environment, and Society at the University of Minnesota ) runs the Praxis Lab and is the co-director of the CREATE project, funded by the University of Minnesota's Grand Challenges initiative to develop environmental research with communities. Her work has appeared in a range of journals, including Society & Space, The Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Progress in Human Geography, and Urban Studies.
Qull Kukla's (Professor of Philosophy and a Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University) main areas of research are social epistemology, bioethics, philosophy of science (especially geography and medicine), philosophy of language, and anti-oppression philosophy. They are also currently a Masters student in Urban and Regional Planning at Georgetown. I am the Editor-in-Chief of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal.
Arun Saldanha (Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Minnesota) is a geographer of race and race relations, travel and tourism, and globalization and colonialism. He is the author of Psychedelic White: Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race, 2007.
Institute Participants:
Ervin James (Full-Time Teaching Professor at Paul Quinn College) primarily responsible for teaching U.S. History, World Geography, U.S. Government, World Civilization, and African American History and Culture courses, in addition to creating and writing exams, and tutoring and advising students taking humanities and social science courses.
Alainya Kavaloski (Chair of English and Humanities, State University of New York at Canton) teaches courses in contemporary American literature, digital media writing, and narrative and mobile games. Her research examines rhetorical infrastructures across emerging media genres such as graphic narratives, hybrid storyscapes, and digital games in order to investigate the ways that media forms are shifting cultural attachments to contested territory in the U.S. and Israel- Palestine.
Jennie Lightweis-Goff's (instructor of English at the University of Mississippi) teaching and scholarship challenges the centrality of nation and periodization to literary studies, exploring minor spaces – smaller than nations or regions – as literary archives with vast temporal boundaries.
Erica Nieblas (Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder in Philosophy) specializes in philosophy of race, philosophy of Law, Applied Ethics, Ethical Theory, and Philosophy of Science. Her research examined social, moral, and political philosophy, feminist philosophy, the ethics and political philosophy of immigration and migration justice.
Meiping Sun (Assistant Professor in Economics at Fordham University) received her Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University. She is an applied microeconomist with interest in urban economics. In particular, her research focuses on public policies that may disproportionately affect vulnerable urban groups.
Gabriela Soto Laveaga's (Professor of the History of Science and Antonio Madero Professor for the Study of Mexico at Harvard University) current research interests interrogate knowledge production and circulation between Mexico and India; medical professionals and social movements; and science and development projects in the twentieth century.
Dr. Jocelyn Fenton Stitt is the Division Chair of the Social Sciences and Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at St. Catherine University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar trained in women's and critical race studies.
Lara Kattekola's (English Professor at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York) research interest examines postcolonial and South Asian Diaspora novels and films.
Sam Maron's (lecturer of Sociology at Emmanuel College) research examines urban imaginaries, neoliberalism, and spectacle in global cities and he received a Ph.D. from Northeastern University in 2021.
Lisa McLeod (Visiting lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Northeastern University) is a professor of Philosophy at Guilford University.
Caitlin Cawley (Lecturer of English at Fordham University in New York City) specializies in 20th and 21st century American literature, film and visual culture, and critical theory.
Richard Hancuff ( lecturer in English at Misericordia University) holds a Ph.D. in English from George Washington University and a BS in Secondary Education from the Pennsylvania State University. He specializes in national identity formation through and against competing and intersecting discourses primarily of race and ethnicity, particularly in African American and American literature.
Pat B. Hope (Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy at Stanford University) specializes in Social Ontology and Epistemology, Ethics and Meta-Ethics, Political Philosophy, Feminist/Queer Philosophy, Critical Race and Disability Studies, 19th-/20th Century, and European Philosophy.
Rebecca Mark (Director of the Institute for Women’s Leadership (IWL) at Rutgers University) is scholar and professor whose research addresses southern writing and cultural representations of trauma.
Haniyeh Pasandi's (Assistant Professor of Francophone Civilizations and Cultures, Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication, at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County) research examines francophone graphic novels and comic books, modern and contemporary French-language literature with an emphasis on visual culture, comparative literature, and transnationalism, and cross-cultural exchange.
Mark Beirn's (Doctoral fellow in International Urban History in the Department of History at Washington University in St. Louis) research is situated within four fields: global urban history; world history; empire and colonialism; and the urban and environmental humanities.
Karl Baughman's (Assistant Professor of History at Prairie View A&M University) research specializes in the Roman Empire and early Christianity. He also dabbles a bit in the wider ancient Mediterranean and the connections between Classical and modern understandings about race and gender.
Katherine Paige Farrington (Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts at Montserrat College of Art) pursued fine arts training, eventually earning an MFA in Visual Arts at Leslie University, and completed my doctorate in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Art Theory with the Institute for Visual Arts.
Marci Littlefield's (Associate Professor of Sociology at the Borough of Manhattan Community College) areas of specialization include race and ethnicity, gender, and family.
Jared McCormick's (Clinical Assistant Professor & Director of Graduate Studies at the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at NYU) research explores issues of tourism and imaginations of places across the Middle East. Additionally, digital scholarship/methods are central to my teaching and personal work.
Kishauna Soljour (Visiting Assistant Orofessor of history at Sarah Lawrence College) received her Ph.D. from the History Department at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Her research explores the Black presence in Paris, France after World War II to the present.
Institute Research Assistants
Vanessa Torres (She/Her/Ella) graduated from University of California, Irvine with a B.A. in Chicana/o/x-Latina/o/x Studies with a double minor in Latin American Studies and Literary Journalism in 2021. She currently pursing an Ph.D in history at Northeastern University.
Cassie Tanks graduated from San Diego State University with a B.A. in History and an M.S. in Library Science from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She in an incoming World History PhD student at Northeastern University.
Kasya O’Connor Grant earned her B.A. in American Studies with a concentration in Education Policy from Kenyon College in 2016. She is pursing an M.A in Public History att Northeastern University.
Surabhi Keesara is an undergraduate student in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University
Chetna Kuanr entered the Northeastern Sociology PhD program in the Fall of 2021. She holds an M.A in International Relations from The University of Chicago, an M.A in Political Science from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a B.A. in Economics (with honors) from University of Delhi.