Members of the Faculty
Professors:
Jennifer Austin, Ph.D., Cornell
First and second language acquisition; language contact; the effects of bilingualism on language and cognition
Jason M. Barr, Ph.D., Columbia
Urban economics; economics of education; computational economics
Steven Diner, Ph.D., Chicago
U.S. urban history; U.S. immigration history; history of American higher education; U.S. progressive era
R. Brian Ferguson, Ph.D., Columbia
Cultural anthropology; anthropology of war; ethnic conflict; state-tribe interaction; policing; Puerto Rico
Jyl Josephson, Ph.D., Maryland (College Park)
Gender, sexuality, and public policy, primarily in the context of U.S. social policy
Lynnette Mahwhinney, Ph.D., Temple
Professional lives of urban teachers and pre-service teachers (with a specific focus on teachers of color), schooling experiences of urban youth, biracial identity development, and autoethnographic approaches in educational settings.
Arthur Powell, Ph.D., Rutgers
Mathematics education; ethnomathematics; urban education
Timothy Raphael, Ph.D., Northwestern
Multidisciplinary scholarship, teaching, and civic engagement that supports research, educational curriculum, public humanities programming, and civic partnerships with community and cultural organizations around immigration
Alan R. Sadovnik, Ph.D., New York
Sociology of education; urban educational policy; qualitative research
Mara Sidney, Ph.D., Colorado
Urban politics and policy; race/ethnicity and politics; immigration; public policy
John Kuo Wei Tchen, Ph.D., Wisconsin
Understanding the multiple presents, pasts, and futures of American cities and metropolitan areas; identity formations; trans-local, cross-cultural communications; archives and epistemologies; progressive pedagogy
David Troutt, J.D., Harvard Law School
Metropolitan dimensions of race, class, and legal structure; intellectual property; torts; critical legal theory
Rose Cuison Villazor, J.D., American
Immigration and citizenship law; property law; Asian Americans and the law; equal protection law; critical race theory
Associate Professors:
Nermin Allam, Ph.D., University of Alberta (Canada)
Social movements; gender politics; Middle Eastern and North African studies; political Islam
Ira Cohen, Ph.D., Wisconsin (Madison)
Sociology of action in everyday life; contemporary and classical social theory; the sociology of modernity; the history of social thought
Christopher Duncan, Ph.D., Yale
Anthropology of religion; violence and post-conflict dynamics; issues of indigenous rights
Janice Gallagher, Ph.D., Cornell
Human rights; Latin America, especially Mexico and Colombia; social movements; international law; transnational advocacy networks; legal mobilization
Eva Giloi, Ph.D., Princeton
19th- and 20th-century European history; modern Germany
Kimberly Holton, Ph.D., Northwestern
Performative modes of conflict and collaboration within the Portuguese and Brazilian immigrant communities in Newark; Spanish and Portuguese studies
Alison Howell, Ph.D., York
International security and critical security studies; military organizations and warfare; global mental health, trauma, and resilience; humanitarianism; military science and scientific racism; science and technology studies; historical international relations; feminist, critical race, and disability theory
Jamie Lew, Ph.D., Columbia
Race and ethnic relations; urban education and policy; immigration and international migration; comparative and international education
Sean Mitchell, Ph.D., Chicago
Sociocultural anthropology; war and violence; race, ethnicity, and nationalism; governance and citizenship; social movements; science and technology studies; the politics of inequality
Kusum Mundra, Ph.D., California (Riverside)
Applied econometrics; immigration and international migration; social networks; gender and minority population; nonparametric and semiparametric models
Rachel Mundy, Ph.D., New York
Twentieth-century sonic culture with interests at the juncture of music, the history of science, and animal studies
Mary Rizzo, Ph.D., University of Minnesota
Food studies; representations of cities; inclusive public history
Isaias Rojas-Perez, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins
Topics in social and cultural theory, focusing on sovereignty, governmentality, violence, rights, and time and memory; the materiality of politics and the politics of materiality; the ritualization of death in Andean Peru
Genese Sodikoff, Ph.D., Michigan
Political economy of biodiversity loss, conservation, and restoration; sociology and anthropology
Whitney Strub, SAS-N; Ph.D., California (Los Angeles)
Modern United States history; sexuality; law; film; culture; politics
Assistant Professors:
Zahra Ali, Ph.D., Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (France)
Women, gender, and feminism; youth, civil society, social and political movements in contexts of war and conflict; contemporary Islam(s); Islamism and Muslim communities
Nermin Allam, Ph.D., Alberta (Canada)
Social movements; gender politics; Middle Eastern and North African studies; political Islam
Peter Hepburn, Ph.D., California (Berkeley)
Sociology; demography; work; criminal justice; and housing
Melissa Valle, Ph.D., Columbia
How race, ethnicity, gender, and class are encoded in the value of urban spaces; sociology and anthropology; and the Department of African American and African Studies
Diane Wong, Ph.D., Cornell
American politics; race and ethnicity;
Programs, Faculty, and Courses 
