BSOS Welcomes New Faculty

Caryn Bell joined the Department of African American Studies as an assistant professor in the fall of 2017. Dr. Bell obtained her PhD in Social and Behavioral Sciences from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research interests focus on the intersection of place, socioeconomic status (SES) and socio-cultural factors in cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors among African Americans. Learn more

Angel Dunbar joins the Department of African American Studies as an assistant professor in the fall of 2018. Dr. Dunbar recently served as a postdoctoral associate in the department. Her research focuses on understanding the unique developmental challenges that children of color encounter and the family processes and individual factors that influence positive adaptation in the face of these challenges. Learn more

Nikeea Copeland Linder joined the Department of African American Studies as an Associate Research Professor in June of 2018. Dr. Copeland Linder’s research focuses on the impact of chronic stress on the mental health and health-risk behaviors of children and adolescents. She is particularly interested in the role of protective factors in promoting resilience among African American youth and the development of prevention and intervention programs for youth.

Kameron Van Patterson joined the Judge Alexander Williams, Jr. Center for Education, Justice & Ethics as Director of Programs in December of 2017. He also serves as a faculty specialist for the Department of African American Studies. Prior to joining the University of Maryland, Dr. Patterson served as the Director of Foundation and Government Grants at The Ellington Fund, a nonprofit organization that works in collaboration with the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. His scholarly research employs critical race theory to examine the historical impact of inequality and social justice movements in western cultures.

Alison Heller joined the Department of Anthropology as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2017. Dr. Heller specializes in medical anthropology, anthropology of humanitarianism and development, reproductive health and obstetric violence, and health inequities in sub-Saharan Africa. Learn more

Daniel Contreras joined the Department of Anthropology as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2018. Dr. Contreras is an anthropological geoarchaeologist interested in human-environment interactions, particularly anthropogenic components of dynamic landscapes and environmental change. His research currently includes both field-based and modeling projects in Peru, Jordan, France, and Greece, where he examines landscape change and its relationship to long-term human occupation. Learn more

Yancey Orr joins the Department of Anthropology in the fall of 2018. Dr. Orr is a cultural anthropologist specializing in environmental knowledge, ethno-science and social theory. Before coming to the University of Maryland, he held academic positions in Canada, Australia and France. His current project explores the relationship between the organic, mechanical and digital worlds as they relate to environmental tasks, ethics and knowledge. [Add Blank Image]

Wade Jacobsen joined the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice as an assistant professor in the fall of 2017. In his research, he examines social and behavioral outcomes of school punishment and juvenile justice involvement. He is particularly interested in how punishment affects a person's social networks, including friendship and family networks, and in understanding the extent to which these network changes explain the association between punishment and subsequent behavior. Learn more

Greg Midgette joins the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice as an assistant professor in the fall of 2018. Dr. Midgette received his PhD from the Pardee RAND Graduate School and MPP from UCLA. He was previously an associate policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, where he combined primary data collection, qualitative analysis, and applied econometric methods to improve understanding of offender decision making and evaluate interventions for illicit drug markets, community corrections, and public health and safety.

María B. Vélez joins the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice in the fall of 2018. Dr. Vélez’s general interests are to understand how stratification along racial-ethnic, political, and economic lines shapes and is shaped by the uneven patterning of crime and justice outcomes. Key themes include investigating: the influence of political conditions on crime patterns across neighborhoods; the dynamic nature of crime; and the consequences of mass incarceration and other forms of criminal justice contact for minority political behavior and the wellbeing of democracy in the United States.

Alka Gandhi joined the Department of Economics as a lecturer in the fall of 2017. Dr. Gandhi received her Ph.D. in Economics from Ohio State University in 2003. Her primary fields of study are Economic History and Macroeconomics. Before arriving at the University of Maryland, she taught at Lycoming College in Williamsport, PA and Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria, VA.

Nolan Pope joined the Department of Economics as an assistant professor in the fall of 2017. Dr. Pope is a labor economist and applied microeconomist who specializes in public policy that improves individuals’ labor market and educational outcomes. His recent research focuses on how measuring and rating teacher quality affects both students and teachers, and how public policies influence underprivileged groups such as immigrants and low-income populations. Learn more

Richard Stahnke joined the Department of Economics as a lecturer in the fall of 2017. Dr. Stahnke received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1999. His research interest is in agent-based modeling, and he taught at the following schools before starting at UMD: Bryn Mawr College, Colgate University, Hamilton College, Moravian College, Vassar College and Williams College.

Jintae Kim 

Taylor Oshan joins the Department of Geographical Sciences as an assistant professor in the fall of 2017. Dr. Oshan is trained as a quantitative human geographer and is primarily interested in developing computational methods for spatiotemporal analysis of urban processes, such as commuting, mobility, crime, and health. He is also interested in how open data and open source technology can be leveraged for urban planning applications and the replicability and reproducibility of science more generally. 

Laura Duncanson joins the Department of Geographical Sciences as an assistant professor in the spring of 2019. Dr. Duncanson completed her PhD at the University of Maryland and worked as a postdoctoral associate at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Her research focuses on studying forest structure and carbon content at a local to global scale, primarily using lidar remote sensing. Additionally, she is heavily engaged with the upcoming NASA/UMD Global Ecosystems Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) mission.

Gabriella Lloyd is a political scientist with background in International Relations and Comparative Politics and areas of expertise in peacekeeping, human security, human rights, and conflict. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Ohio State University in August 2017 and served as the 2017-18 postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University. Learn more 

Eric Hoover joins the Department of Hearing & Speech Sciences as an assistant professor in the fall of 2018. The goal of Dr. Hoover’s work is to develop technologies that remove barriers to communication by applying our understanding of how the auditory system represents complex acoustic environments. His research interests include the optimization of hearing aids to augment an individual's hearing ability, the effect of distortion introduced by hearing aids on the perception of basic acoustic features, and the perception of complex acoustic scenes in people with difficulty understanding speech in noise.

Sarah Sohns joined the Department of Hearing & Speech Sciences as an assistant clinical professor in the fall of 2017. She received her Au.D. from the University of Pittsburgh and was a LEND fellow in pediatric audiology. Most recently, Dr. Sohns served as an instructor at Temple University Lewis Katz School of Medicine. Her clinical interests include pediatric audiology, tinnitus and hyperacusis, vestibular and balance disorders, and hearing aid and sound amplification for people with hearing loss.

Eliza Thompson joins the Department of Hearing & Speech Sciences as an assistant clinical professor in the fall of 2018. Thompson is a bilingual speech language pathologist with 18 years of experience. She started her career working in school systems in both Baltimore and Washington, DC before moving to Los Angeles where she started a private practice. Thompson has worked around the United States as a clinical supervisor and served as a clinician in Ghana and Kenya.

Chris Antoun joined the Joint Program in Survey Methodology as an assistant research professor in the fall of 2017. He is jointly appointed in the College of Information Studies (iSchool). Dr. Antoun’s research focuses on using new data collection modes and alternative data sources. Before coming to UMD, he obtained his PhD in Survey Methodology from the University of Michigan and was postdoctoral fellow at the Census Bureau. 

Christoph Kern joins the Joint Program in Survey Methodology as a visiting professor in the fall of 2018. After completing his PhD at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) in 2011, Dr. Kern joined the University of Mannheim in 2017 as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Professorship for Statistics and Methodology. His current research focuses on the usage of machine learning methods in survey research.

Brian Kim joined the Joint Program in Survey Methodology as a lecturer in the fall of 2017. He received his PhD in Statistics from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Kim’s research focuses on social network analysis, network sampling methods (particularly respondent-driven sampling), and population size estimation.

Xuan (Anna) Li joined the Department of Psychology as an assistant professor in the spring of 2018. Dr. Li received her Ph.D. degree in Neuroscience at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in North Chicago and completed her postdoctoral training at the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Baltimore. Her lab focuses on examining neural mechanisms of drug addiction. Learn more

Jessica Magidson joined the Department of Psychology as an Assistant Professor in January of 2018. She received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from University of Maryland in 2013, and prior to returning to Maryland she was an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and on staff at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Magidson’s research focuses on evaluating peer-delivered, brief behavioral interventions to address substance use in the context of medical and psychiatric comorbidity in the US and sub-Saharan Africa.

Alec Solway joined the Department of Psychology as an assistant professor in the spring of 2018. Dr. Solway’s research focuses on understanding information processing in human learning, decision-making, and episodic memory, and how it is disrupted in psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and depression. Learn more

Amelia Branigan joins the Department of Sociology as an assistant professor in the fall of 2018. Dr. Branigan is a social demographer with central interests in inequality, health, and the criminal justice system. Current projects consider the social consequences of variation in skin color; whether infertility is associated with differential outcomes in children ultimately conceived; and the relationship between health and criminal justice system involvement. 

Monica Caudillo joins the Department of Sociology as an assistant professor in January of 2019. Dr. Caudillo holds a PhD in Sociology from New York University and has conducted domestic and international research in family demography, gender, race and ethnicity, crime and violence, sexuality and reproductive health, and education. Learn more

Nicole Cousin-Gossett joined the Department of Sociology in the fall of 2018 as the Director of Undergraduate Studies and a Senior Lecturer. Prior to arriving at the University of Maryland, Dr. Cousin-Gossett was a Senior Lecturer at UMBC in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Health Administration & Policy. Her professional and teaching interests include social inequality, racial/ethnic relations and economic sociology. Learn more

David J. Johnson joins the Department of Sociology as a postdoctoral researcher in the fall of 2018. A social-cognitive psychologist, Dr. Johnson’s research employs computational models and secondary data analyses to study the psychological processes that underlie decisions. He has used this approach to understand decisions by law enforcement to shoot unarmed civilians. Learn more

Wayne Santoro joins the Department of Sociology as an associate professor in the fall of 2018. Dr. Santoro’s research interest lies in the intersection of social movements and race. Key lines of work examine the conditions under which governments become responsive to Latino and African American social movements, investigate why racialized populations like Mexican Americans and Arab Americans join protest events, and assess processes of institutionalization and radicalization during the decline of the modern civil rights movement.