New Faculty Bios, AY 2012-13

The College of Social and Behavioral Sciences welcomes the following new tenure track faculty and lecturers to campus.

Anthropology

Sonya Atalay, Assistant Professor, Public Anthropology  (joint appointment with Commonwealth Honors College)
Atalay received her PhD from UC Berkeley in 2003. Her research focus is in indigenous anthropology, and she examines anthropology and archaeology's effects and impacts on native and local communities. Atalay has applied this approach in diverse sites in Turkey and among native communities in the U.S. Her impressive portfolio of publications on these topics includes one book that was just released and a second in preparation, several peer-reviewed articles, and numerous chapters and academic research reports. Atalay is the recipient of numerous prestigious national research awards and fellowships. Her dissertation was supported by Fulbright and the American Research Institute in Turkey. Since completion of her PhD she has received funding from the National Science Foundation, SSRC Canada, and the Ford Foundation. 

Jen Sandler, Lecturer, Director of University Alliance for Community Transformation (UACT).
Sandler is an ethnographer, focusing on community activism, education, and the anthropology of public policy. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008, and subsequently held visiting faculty positions at Trinity College and Bates College. Sandler's research focuses on the knowledge practices of activist organizations, and she has conducted research with urban educators, community organizers, policy activists, and popular educators in various urban centers in the United States as well as in Mexico. She also has a strong record of innovative teaching and facilitating community-based learning between college students and diverse community and education activists.

Economics

We had the unique opportunity to search jointly with the History department and were fortunate to hire two economic historians, both of whom focus on South Asia. 

Johan Mathew, Assistant Professor of History and Economics 
Mathew studies a host of illicit activities -- smuggling, counterfeiting, human trafficking, and piracy -- on the Arabian Sea from the colonial era to the present. More broadly, he is interested in the economic cultures and histories of South Asia, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean region. Mathew completed his PhD at Harvard University this summer and he will teach "The Economics of Piracy" this fall.

Priyanka Srivastava, Assistant Professor of History and Economics
Srivastava researches class, labor and urbanism in 20th-century India.  Her dissertation examines workers in the textile industry in Bombay in the early 20th century. Priyanka defended her dissertation, with distinction, at the University of Cincinnati in June 2012. This fall, Priyanka will teach "City, Industry, and Labor in Modern India, 1750-1950."

Roberto Veneziani, Associate Professor of Economics
An Italian economist, Veneziani will join the Economics Department in January 2013. He comes to UMass Amherst from a tenured position at Queen Mary, University of London. A PhD student of Baron Desai at the London School of Economics, Veneziani is a highly skilled microeconomic theorist working critically in the tradition of analytic marxism.  

Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning

We had the unique opportunity to search jointly with the Architecture and Design program and were fortunate to hire:

Carey Clouse, Asssistant Professor of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
Clouse is an educator and practitioner with a body of work that addresses the intersection between sustainability, social justice, and design/build. With a BArch from the University of Oregon and SMArchS in Architecture and Urbanism from MIT, Carey most recently was lead design faculty at Yestermorrow/UMass Design and Build Semester in Vermont, and taught architecture as an adjunct assistant professor at Tulane University.

Political Science

Regine A. Spector, Assistant Professor
Spector holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley and a BA and MA in International Relations and International Policy Studies from Stanford University. She studies political economy, development, and politics in Eurasia, and her research has appeared in Problems of Post-Communism, Post-Soviet Affairs, The Washington Quarterly and numerous edited volumes. Spector teaches courses in comparative politics, political economy, development, and Eurasian studies. She is also the coordinator of the Central Eurasian Studies Speaker Series at the Woodrow Wilson Center's Kennan Institute in Washington, D.C., where she has also been a visiting research scholar.

Kevin L. Young, Assistant Professor
Young's research is in the field of international political economy, with a particular focus on the politics of financial regulation. His research examines the ways that interest groups engage with financial regulators at the national and international levels in attempts to shape the content of financial regulation. Before coming to UMass he taught in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics, and last year was based at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University as a Post-Doctoral Fellow. He teaches classes on international political economy, the dynamics of corporate lobbying in the global economy, and the politics of financial markets..

Sociology

Jeffrey Beemer, Lecturer
A medical demographer with a deep expertise in social theory, Beemer focuses on nineteenth-century institutional and demographic change, with a theoretical focus on changing medical and public health discourses during the epidemiological transition. He earned his PhD from UMass Amherstin 2011 and has been the Associate Editor of Social Science History. He also has been working on an NSF-supported project via the Univeristy of Michigan.

Jasmine Kerrissey, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Kerrissey earned her PhD in sociology this past year from the University of Califonia, Irvine. She studies the organizational and political development of unions in the United States. She joins the Sociology Department as a core faculty member of the Labor Center, where she will support the on and off campus professional master's programs in labor studies.

Kristy Watkins, Lecturer
Watkins, who works on issues of gender, sexuality and families, earned her PhD from UMass Amherst and spent last year at Colgate University. Her dissertation research "Child Custody and Judicial Constructions of Parenthood" was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Jonathan Wynn, Assistant Professor of Sociology.
Wynn earned a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center and taught at both Smith College and Amherst before joining the tenure track. He is the author of The Tour Guide: Walking and Talking New York (University of Chicago Press) as well as a half dozen articles. An excellent teacher, he brings strengths in the study of culture, media, and ethnography.

September 14, 2012