Meet the New BSOS Faculty Members

The College of Behavioral and Social Sciences is pleased to introduce the talented new faculty members joining the college for the 2022–23 academic year. 

Associate Professor Chinyere Osuji, Department of African American Studies

Dr. Chinyere Osuji, who came to BSOS as a Visiting Associate Professor during the 2021-2022 academic year, returned to the Department of African American Studies as an Associate Professor in the fall of 2022.

Her research—which has won awards from the Population Association of America and the American Sociological Association Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities—examines how Blacks around the world understand and negotiate social interactions with racial and ethnic others and its implications for justice and equity. Her first book, Boundaries of Love: Interracial Marriage and the Meaning of Race (NYU Press, 2019) compares how Black-White couples in Brazil and the United States understand and negotiate racial boundaries. The work relies on over 100 interviews with Black-White couples in these two countries to compare how national racial ideologies (colorblindness vs. racial democracy), gender and other social categories yield particular meanings of race and race-mixing.

Her experience navigating healthcare with a disability and her Nigerian immigrant background have inspired her current research conducting interviews with first and second-generation African immigrants in the nursing profession. She examines their social interactions in nursing school and working as RNs to understand white supremacy in the nursing profession from a critical and intersectional perspective. This project will provide a new lens to understand the racial politics of healthcare and the role of nursing in addressing health inequities—issues made more salient with the Covid-19 pandemic.
 

Assistant Professor Daniel Reck, Department of Economics

Daniel Reck, Ph.D., is an economist with interests in public and behavioral economics. Specifically, one strand of his recent research examines tax evasion by high-wealth individuals, and another the optimal policymaking for behavioral economics. 

Prior to joining the Department of Economics—through which he will teach ECON454: "Public Finance and Public Policy" this fall—he earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan and completed a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley. He also served as an Assistant Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. 
 

Assistant Professor Xiaopeng Song, Department of Geographical Sciences

Xiaopeng Song is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences. His research focuses on understanding the trends, drivers and impacts of global land-use change using satellite remote sensing and geospatial techniques, which has broad implications for issues such as food and energy security, and climate change. Currently, his research on satellite-based crop mapping and food production forecasting, which he will continue to conduct at the University of Maryland, is funded by NASA, USGS and World Resources Institute. 

Song has published in a number of leading academic journals including Nature, Nature Climate Change, Nature Food, Nature Sustainability, PNAS and Science Advances. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 2015, and worked in GEOG until 2019. He is now re-joining the GEOG faculty after teaching for three years at Texas Tech University.
 

Lecturer Hyunki Kim, Department of Government and Politics

Hyunki Kim is a lecturer in the Department of Government and Politics, through which she earned her Ph.D. in international relations and comparative politics.

Growing up in South Korea, Kim developed her academic interests through exposure to the nuclear conflict with North Korea and territorial disputes with neighboring countries. Before she came to academia, she worked for policy think tanks and the Department of Defense analyzing security issues and teaching classes in security and cooperation to military personnel around the world. Her academic research broadly focuses on the role of international institutions in conflict management and how they interact with domestic political factors. Her current project examines the United Nations’ messaging tactics to conflict actors and their effectiveness in preventing war.

Kim teaches courses on international relations, research writing, and political economy for undergraduate and master’s students, and this fall will be teaching GVPT 708: "International Relations Theory" and GVPT 409A: "Peace and Conflict Processes."
 

Assistant Clinical Professor Melissa Latham, Department of Psychology

Melissa Latham, Ph.D., will be beginning her role as an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychology this fall. She will supervise graduate students' clinical work in the UMD Psychology Clinic and teach psychology graduate courses such as "Adult Intervention," "Adult Psychopathology," and "Research Design."

Latham will also serve as the department's Assistant Director of Clinical Training. In this role, she will ensure requirements to keep the training program accredited are met, and collaborate with students and faculty to determine appropriate training activities (including classes and clinical work). Latham sees her role as a faculty advocate for the graduate students and is excited to serve in such a unique way.

Latham is passionate about providing clinical service, especially treating trauma, and training the next generation of clinical psychologists. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Oregon in 2020, after completing her predoctoral internship at the UC San Diego/San Diego VA Healthcare System. She subsequently served as a postdoctoral psychology fellow at the San Diego VA Healthcare System, specializing in treating Veterans with PTSD and insomnia.
 

Associate Professor Ethan Mereish, Department of Psychology

Ethan Mereish, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Prior to joining UMD, he was an associate professor at American University. He completed his doctoral training at Boston College, a clinical psychology residency at Harvard Medical School, and a postdoctoral research fellowship at Brown University. His research focuses on understanding the effects of social, psychological, and cultural determinants of health for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals and racial/ethnic minorities as well as factors that promote their resilience. Mereish will be starting an NIH-funded longitudinal study examining the effects of intersectional stigma and oppression on substance use and mental health among LGBTQ youth of color. He will be teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in psychology in his research lab, the Lavender Lab.

Mereish is excited to mentor undergraduate and graduate students, including clinical psychology doctoral students. 
 

Lecturer Abigail Nicolas, Department of Psychology

Abigail Nicolas is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology. She earned her Ph.D. in counseling psychology from University at Albany (SUNY) and master's in mental health counseling from Fordham University. She completed her pre-doctoral internship at Georgia State University’s Counseling & Testing Center. She served as a postdoctoral fellow and later a staff psychologist and assistant training director at Therapy Group of DC—a private group practice in Washington, D.C.—where she provided training and clinical supervision, as well as culturally-informed individual and group therapy to adult individuals of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Nicolas has taught courses on counseling psychology, career planning, and first-year experience, assessment and counseling skills development. Her research interests include racial/ethnic discrimination and mental health outcomes, multicultural counseling competence, and clinical supervision.

Nicolas is excited to join UMD and the Department of Psychology, to teach and mentor the next generation of diverse students in the field of psychology from a social justice lens.
 

Lecturer Jennifer Ashlock, Department of Sociology

Jennifer Ashlock, Ph.D., studies the workplace, pathways into jobs, and gender. She is particularly interested in the intersections of social class origins, gender and the importance that people place on various aspects of work. 

Her doctoral thesis evaluated the hypothesis that work experiences impact how young people come to emphasize different aspects of jobs. She found evidence that what a person gets out of their job and what one comes to want from future jobs is mediated by how they perceive their degree of efficacy in the world; a finding that informs her current research on STEM careers and attitudes—especially with respect to groups that are underrepresented in computing occupations.

During the fall 2022 semester Ashlock will be teaching SOCY335: "Health and Illness" and SOCY 463: "Digital Technology and Society."
 

Lecturer Jeffrey Lynhurst Parsells-Johnson, Department of Sociology

J. L. Parsells-Johnson, Ph.D. is a qualitative sociologist interested in uncovering the social conditions needed for intercultural dialogue and movement-building. His work centrally addresses key issues and debates at the heart of these matters, particularly the promise and limits of privileged allies in social movements. His publications have contributed to an emerging line of research focused on individuals occupying privileged racial, class, sex, gender, and/or sexual social locations who identify as allies for marginalized groups, documenting the interactional mechanisms of their listening to social movements and the social construction of their moral identities. 

During the 2022-2023 academic year, he will be teaching three courses: "Introduction to Sociology"; "Introduction to Social Problems"; and "Sociology of Men: How much has masculinity really changed?"
 

Published on Wed, Aug 17, 2022 - 11:02AM