UC Santa Cruz’s Social Sciences Division welcomed 10 outstanding new faculty members this academic year, in addition to three faculty members in the Anthropology, Economics, and Sociology Departments who joined us at the start of the calendar year. Each brings unique strengths that will help to advance the division’s excellence in research and teaching and the positive societal impact of that work.
“This is a very accomplished, passionate, and innovative group of new faculty members,” said Social Sciences Dean Katharyne Mitchell. “We’re honored that they chose to join us, and I think it says a lot about the quality of the intellectual and social environment that our current faculty, staff, and administrators have created. We’re excited to introduce our new faculty members to our amazing students and to our beautiful campus.”
Learn more about the expertise of each new faculty member below.
New faculty members for the 2024-2025 academic year:
David Schoenholzer, Assistant Professor of Economics
David Schoenholzer is a political economist focusing on public economics and its convergence with urban and developmental economics. His research seeks to understand how public goods can be provided efficiently using historical information, spatial data, and microeconomics methods.
Arshad Ali, Associate Professor of Education
Arshad Ali is a multidisciplinary scholar and community worker who studies youth cultural practices through exploring questions of democracy, liberalism, and modernity. His research examines the cultural geography of Muslim student surveillance and citizenship in the US and his current project explores how Muslim and non-Western storywork can support culturally sustaining elementary science curricula.
Paulo Tan, Assistant Professor of Education
Paulo Tan specializes in teaching and researching inclusive elementary mathematics education. His work advances social justice and equity through abolitionist mathematics education for and with disabled youth of color. Before becoming a scholar, Tan spent ten years as a public middle and high school teacher serving diverse populations.
Bo Yang, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
Faculty Director, Center for Integrated Spatial Research and Interim Director of Master of Arts in Geographic Information Systems Spatial Technologies, Applications, and Research (GISTAR)
Bo Yang conducts interdisciplinary research using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing technologies, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), machine learning, and urban data science. From coastal ecosystems to land vulnerable to wildfires, his work focuses on solving environmental issues through community-engaged scholarship. His research has been widely funded by NSF, NASA, and USDOT.
Laura Beth Bugg, Associate Professor of Social Sciences
Associate Director of Global and Community Health
Laura Beth Bugg studies the intersection of religion, migration, urban governance, and spatial justice. Her current research examines the role of corporate chaplaincy programs and the religious reproduction of seasonal farmworker precarity. She also works to develop experiential learning for social justice as part of the Global and Community Health program.
Cinthya Martinez, Assistant Professor of Latin American & Latino Studies
Cinthya Martinez is a community-engaged scholar and organizer focusing on border and migration studies. Her research and teaching practices include examining incarceration, detention, and sexual violence issues through the perspectives of Chicanx/Latinx studies and abolitionist feminist theory.
Siwar Hasan-Aslih, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Siwar Hasan Aslih is a social psychologist who studies the dynamics of collective action and resistance, public reactions to police repression, emotional processes in intergroup contexts, and the psychological effects of language within social settings. Siwar’s research spans diverse group contexts, with a focus on Palestine/Israel and the U.S.
Hanna Kim, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Hanna Kim is a quantitative psychologist specializing in statistical modeling and analysis for education and social science research. Her expertise includes developing causal inference methods for evaluating longitudinal interventions, as well as methods for analyzing dyadic and clustered data.
Mike McCarthy, Associate Professor of Sociology
Director of Community Studies
Mike McCarthy is a social theorist and historical sociologist studying power and emancipatory politics. Taking a critical approach, Mike's work blurs the lines between community activism and theory to explore the past and possible futures of economic democracy. His new book, The Master's Tools: How Finance Wrecked Democracy (and a Radical Plan to Rebuild It), will be published by Verso Books in January 2025.
Madhavi Murty, Associate Professor of Sociology
Madhavi Murty is a media studies scholar with research and teaching interests in popular culture, South Asian studies, feminism, and intersections of identity, including caste, gender, race, and sexuality. Her work answers questions surrounding nationalism, globalization, neoliberalism, postcolonial theory, and political economy.
Faculty members who joined earlier in 2024:
Peter Christensen, Associate Professor of Economics
Peter Christensen is an applied microeconomist who studies energy and environmental economics, public policy, and technology to solve social and environmental issues. His scholarly work primarily focuses on integrating economics and computer science to leverage the power of data, algorithms, and experiments in economics research.
Sanjay Barbora, Associate Professor of Sociology
Sanjay Barbora is a sociologist dedicated to investigating peace and conflict in India and the Asian continent. His research explores the Anthropocene and social movements, including colonialism, plantation systems, ethnic politics, and labor issues and movements.
Dolly Kikon, Professor of Anthropology
Faculty Director, Center for South Asian Studies
Dolly Kikon is a Lotha Naga anthropologist who focuses on ethnographic methods that center Indigenous voices and lived experiences through decolonizing frameworks. She has written extensively on development, food, gender, human rights, militarization, political economy, and social movements. Kikon leads advocacy initiatives on gender justice, hydrocarbon extraction, and foodways in South Asia and guides Naga repatriation processes.
