Social Sciences: New Faculty Members

Warm welcome to the new faculty members of the School of Social Sciences, who are joining Queens College in the fall of 2023:

Dr. Nerve V. Macaspac

Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Library and Information Studies

Professor Nerve V. Macaspac (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of Information Studies at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, and a Doctoral Faculty at the Earth and Environmental Sciences at the Graduate Center. His current research examines community-led peace zones as spaces of unarmed civilian protection amid active violent conflicts. He is a Co-Investigator for “Creating Safer Spaces,” a 5-year international and interdisciplinary research project funded by the United Kingdom Research and Innovation’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, and for “Building the SUNY/CUNY Southeast Asia Consortium,” a 4-year project establishing Southeast Asian Studies network in the SUNY and CUNY systems funded by the Luce Foundation. He received his Ph.D. in Geography at the University of California in Los Angeles, and a Masters in Asian Studies at the University of California at Berkeley University.

Emily Drabinski

Associate Professor
Graduate School of Library and Information Studies

Professor Emily Drabinski’s research interests include the politics of knowledge organization, teaching and learning in libraries, and critical perspectives on library structures and services. Her academic background is in Political Science (B.A.) from Columbia University, Library and Information Science (M.S.L.I.S.) from Syracuse University, and Composition and Rhetoric (M.A.) from Long Island University, Brooklyn.

Dr. Thao Bui

Professor Bui received her Ph.D. in Economics from Louisiana State University. Her research interests are in the field of Applied Microeconomics, with a particular emphasis on Health Economics and Economics of Education. Her research is focused on understanding the effects of public policies related to health and education in various contexts, as well as the long-term effects of prenatal conditions.

Dr. Andrew Amstutz

Professor Andrew Amstutz is a historian of Islam in modern South Asia. His research interests include the intertwined histories of science, technology, and Islam in India as well as debates over museums and public history. He teaches classes on the history of Islam, South Asia, the history of science, and public history. He received his Ph.D. in History from Cornell University and was an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock prior to joining Queens College. He was a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 2021.

Brandon Jeffries

Lecturer
Graduate School of Library and Information Studies

Brandon Jeffries is a Librarian with over 17 years of experience in the nonprofit industry including but not limited to: facilitation, direct service, management and executive management in Queens County, New York. Primarily working in Youth Services, Brandon has also supported adult programming and specialty services pertaining to housing, domestic violence, restorative justice, as well as prison re-entry. Currently, his research includes youth services and empowering lifestyle changes within BIPOC communities. Notable awards include being the recipient of “Community Builders Award” by Rockaway Development & Revitalization Corporation, Queens “Stars Under 40” award -citation from NYS Senator Joseph P. Addabbo, and recipient of “Proclamation for Exemplary Community Service” from then Councilmember Donovan Richards. Brandon Jeffries’ intention is clear cut: to bring resources, best practices and learned experiences to the students at Queens College Graduate Library Science Program.

Dr. Yan Yan

Assistant Professor
Accounting and Information Systems

Professor Yan Yan received her Ph.D. in Accounting from Baruch College, City University of New York in 2016. Prior to joining Queens College, she was an Assistant Professor of Accounting at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Professor Yan Yan’s research interests include cost behavior, cost management, and supply chain management. Her research has been published in Journal of Corporate Finance and Asian Accounting Review.

Lisa V. Betty

Lecturer
Department of History and Africana program

Lisa V. Betty (she/her) teaches on themes of land, labor, migration, and diaspora in the Americas, the Caribbean and Africa. In addition to university teaching, Lisa has worked in the field of nonprofit advocacy serving in organizations and university-based institutions and programs that advocate for learners, children, families, immigrants, and incarcerated people. Lisa is a PhD Candidate (ABD) in History at Fordham University where her dissertation focuses on the segmented diaspora and migration stories of Cuban-Jamaican families in eastern Cuba and The Bronx. She is a Community Researcher for the Bronx African American History Project at Fordham University and The Bronx County Historical Society supporting community-based oral history initiatives. Lisa received a Bachelor of Arts in History from George Washington University, a Master of Arts in History from Howard University, and a Master of Arts in Criminal Justice and Sociocultural History from New York University.

Dr. Robert Nyamushosho

Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology

Professor Robert Nyamushosho is an anthropological archaeologist whose research, and teaching are centred on re-imagining Africa’s place, and its diaspora in world prehistory. His primary area of interest is sub-Saharan Africa, with an active research program that focuses on understanding the early history of ancient civilizations such as Chumnungwa, and Great Zimbabwe. His research encompasses diverse topics, such as the anthropology of technology, the formation of early states, urbanism, the emergence of inequality, the interplay between landscapes and past societies, interpretation, and representation of heritage, decoloniality, concept revision, and the politics of knowledge production. Additionally, he explores Africa’s contributions to other world civilizations through trans-Atlantic and Indian Ocean-based networks, challenging previous archaeological studies that perpetuated stereotypes of precolonial Africa as underdeveloped and isolated. He strongly believes in the reciprocal relationship between research and teaching, with each informing and enriching the other. His research approach is both collections-based and field-based with several projects working in collaboration with local communities, museums, and universities.

Dr. Soniya Munshi

Soniya Munshi’s research and teaching interests include illness, disability, carework, and reproductive justice in Asian America; gendered violence in migrant communities, the carceral state, and transformative justice; feminist theories, methodologies, and movements; and critical, accessible, and open pedagogies. Her work has been supported by the NEH, ACLS/Mellon, NYS Council for the Humanities, Lambda Literary, the Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation, Monson Arts, and Blue Mountain Center. Soniya served as the Interim Executive Director of the Asian American/Asian Research Institute (AAARI) at CUNY (2022-2023). Prior to this role, she was an Associate Professor in CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College’s Department of Ethnic and Race Studies, where she taught Asian American Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies. Soniya is currently an affiliate faculty in the CUNY Graduate Center’s Critical Social/Personality Psychology Program. Soniya received her Ph.D. in Sociology with an Advanced Women’s Studies Certificate from the CUNY Graduate Center. She has a B.A. in Women’s Studies and in Psychology from Macalester College.

Assistant Professor
Accounting and Information Systems

Dr. Zhang’s teaching areas include financial accounting, managerial accounting, and accounting information system. His research interests focus on political connection, voluntary disclosure, and audit pricing, and some of his research works are published in Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies, Asia-Pacific Journal of Accounting & Economics, and China Accounting and Finance Review. Before joining Queens College, Dr. Zhang was an Associate Professor at Lawrence Technological University. Prior to that, he received his Ph.D. in accounting from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology

Professor Christine Jang-Trettien is an urban and economic sociologist with empirical interests in race and racism, health, residential mobility, real estate speculation, financialization, and spatial inequality. Her book (in progress) looks at the evolution of expansive, unregulated housing markets in Black neighborhoods in Baltimore from 1980 to 2015. It examines how existing urban structures interact with macro-trends such as mass-participatory financialization and place speculation. Her work has been funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Johns Hopkins University, University of Wisconsin, and the Princeton Alliance for Collaborative Research and Innovation. Her papers have received awards from the Urban Affairs Association and the American Sociological Association. She was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University and received her Ph.D from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. A.K.M. Skarpelis

Richard Lachmann Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology

Professor Anna Skarpelis is a comparative historical and cultural sociologist who works on transnational and global questions of racial classification, violence, and artificial intelligence. After receiving her Ph.D. at New York University, she has held postdoctoral appointments at Harvard and the Berlin Social Science Center. English is her fourth language; she loves languages and images and archives. Her work on epistemology and classification is published in the American Journal of Sociology and Qualitative Sociology. Current teaching and research interests center around computer vision, simulation, and what it means to be human. At QC, she is slated to teach sociological theory, comparative historical perspectives on artificial intelligence, as well as computational and qualitative methods.

Dr. Thomas Hilgers

Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy

Professor Thomas Hilgers studied philosophy and film studies at the Free University Berlin and the University of Pennsylvania. He received his PhD in philosophy from UPenn in 2010. Before joining Queens College, he worked as a lecturer, research associate, and fellow at universities in Berlin, Potsdam, Duesseldorf, and New York City. His areas of research and teaching are aesthetics, ethics, philosophy of technology, philosophy of time, philosophy of film, Kant, and Post-Kantian philosophy. In his classes, students explore philosophical problems not only by engaging with classical and contemporary philosophical texts but also by engaging with works of art. Professor Hilgers is specifically interested in discussing with his students the aesthetic and philosophical implications of contemporary media and technologies. His book “Aesthetic Disinterestedness: Art, Experience, and the Self” was published by Routledge in 2017. At the moment, he is working on a new book project. The objective of this project is to determine the possibility of a fulfilling temporality under the conditions of our current information age.

Dr. Maria DeLongoria

Associate Professor of History
Associate Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs

Professor DeLongoria is committed to liberatory education through research and teaching that includes the lynching of Black women, racial & ethnic identity, and race/gender discrimination in Higher Ed. She holds a B.A in History from Virginia State University, a M.A. in History from Morgan State University, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Columbia-Missouri.

Dr. Vikki C. Terrile

Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Library and Information Studies

Professor Vikki C. Terrile’s research interests focus on the intersections of libraries and homelessness, particularly child and family homelessness. In addition, she is interested in information behaviors and practices around making and crafting. She has taught classes on Young Adult Library Services, Family and Youth Homelessness and Libraries, and Academic Libraries. Her academic background is in English (BA from Wells College), Library and Information Science (MSLS from Long Island University), Urban Affairs (MA from Queens College, CUNY), and Education (PhD from SUNY, the University at Buffalo).

Dr. Meriem Aissa

Lecturer
Department of Political Science

Meriem Aissa received her PhD in political science from Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her primary research interests include contemporary politics in the Middle East and North Africa, postcolonial studies, women and politics, and resistance among marginalized communities in the Global South. She is currently working on a book project that examines how women politicians empower themselves and their communities in Algeria. Dr. Aissa is among a small group of scholars who do research on women politicians in the Arab world. Prior to joining Queens College, she held a position as a post-doctoral researcher at the Jane Nelson Institute for Women’s Leadership at Texas Woman’s University.

Mark M. Mazzo

Lecturer
Accounting and Information Systems

I have a Masters Degree in Taxation. My teaching interests span Financial Accounting, Taxation, and Cost Accounting. I have been an Adjunct Lecturer at Queens College for over 25 years.

Vijay P Kumar

Lecturer
Accounting and Information Systems

Professor Vijay P Kumar received his B.B.A. (Public Accounting), Magna Cum Laude, from Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY) and his M.B.A. (Finance) from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. He is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in New York State. He has taught a wide array of undergraduate courses at Queens College. They include Intermediate and Advanced Accounting, Financial Statement Analysis and Principles of Auditing. He has taught graduate courses in State and Local Taxes and Tax-Exempt Entities, and Deferred Compensation and Employee Benefits.

Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology

Peter Ore is a sociologist who thinks pressing questions about capitalism, the state, and the disposition of industrial waste can be answered by studying ”boring things” like official statistics, environmental bureaucracies, and monitoring technologies. He teaches courses in quantitative reasoning and the sociology of data.

Faculty members who joined the School of Social Sciences during the previous academic year:

Dr. Yoon Jin Lee

Assistant Professor
Political Science Department

Professor Yoon Jin Lee’s research interests span the Indo-Pacific, alliance politics, international institutions, and race and racism in both the study and practice of international relations. In her research, she develops and applies a sociological theory of choice and she employs both positivist and interpretivist methods. She teaches classes on International Politics, Politics of the International Economy, and Global Politics of Race. Her academic background is in Economics (B.A.), Regional Studies-East Asia (M.A.), and Government (M.A. and Ph.D.) from Harvard University.

Nafiz Zaman Shuva

Assistant Professor
GSLIS

Professor Nafiz Zaman Shuva is an award-winning Library and Information Science faculty member with several years of global experience in teaching undergraduate and graduate programs. He holds an MA in Information Science and Library Management from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, an international master’s degree in Digital Library Learning from three European institutions in Norway, Estonia, and Italy, and a Ph.D. in Library and Information Science from The University of Western Ontario, Canada. Dr. Shuva’s doctoral study, one of the largest doctoral studies on immigrants’ information behavior in North America, explored the culturally situated, complex settlement information behavior of immigrants in Canada and the role of information in their Canadian lives, looking in particular at the information behavior that occurs between pre-arrival and after arrival information needs and seeking related to their settlement into Canadian society. His current teaching and research center around areas of social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Eric Goldfischer

Lecturer
Department of Urban Studies

Professor Eric Goldfischer received his PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on the visual politics of homelessness, the policing of public space, and trajectories of green urban development in New York City. Before entering academia, he worked as a community organizer in the Bronx, and has also worked as a researcher in nonprofit and activist settings utilizing the methodology of participatory action-research. His pedagogical approach is highly experiential and inspired by popular education. In his classes, students begin from their own life experiences and work together to build a deeper understanding of urban environments and of how we can create a more just city for all.

Alev Yildirim

Assistant Professor of Finance
Department of Economics

Professor Alev Yildirim’s research interests are in the areas of FinTech, labor and finance, technology, automation, innovation, and banking. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from The Graduate Center, City University of New York in 2018 and was an Assistant Professor of Finance at Southern Connecticut State University prior to joining Queens College.

Ryan O’Loughlin

Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy

Professor Ryan O’Loughlin is an environmental philosopher with a focus on science. His academic background is in History and Philosophy of Science (Ph.D., Indiana University). He is interested in how scientists make discoveries about nature, how they justify their conclusions, and whether (and how) they are influenced by values. More specifically, he studies how climate scientists build and use models to simulate climate change and what these simulations can tell us. His teaching interests also lie at the intersection of philosophy and climate change. In his classes, students enter into a dialogue with great thinkers whose ideas are brought to bear on pressing environmental issues of our time.

Maggie Dickinson

Associate Professor
Department of Urban Studies

Maggie Dickinson is the author of Feeding the Crisis: Care and Abandonment in America’s Food Safety Net. Her research is broadly concerned with urban food systems, hunger, and inequality.

S. E. Hackney

Assistant Professor
GSLIS

Professor Shack Hackney received their PhD in Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh (’22) and their MSLIS from Pratt Institute (’16). Their dissertation research explores the social, linguistic, and computational history of emojis, as well as their implications on how we use digital text today.

Eric Rosano

Assistant Professor
Accounting and Information Systems

Professor Eric D. Rosano obtained his doctoral degree in accounting from Florida State University and is a financial archival accounting researcher. His specific accounting research interests focus on understanding the financial reporting environment, capital markets, emerging technology, and industry clustering. Dr. Rosano previously taught accounting at Arizona State University, worked for EY in financial services, and served in the US Army and Army National Guard in both military intelligence and as an infantryman. His personal interests include writing and Mythulu.

Mona Kleinberg

Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science

Professor Kleinberg earned her BA from the University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude in 2004. She received her PhD in Political Science from Rutgers, New Brunswick in 2014. She was an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell before joining Queens College in the Fall of 2022. She studies how technology and new media affect political knowledge, attitudes and behavior. She also examines the role of race and gender in American political opinion and behavior, and she has a significant interest in survey and experimental research. Professor Kleinberg is trained as a political psychologist and uses experiments and surveys in her research. Her work has appeared in Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Behavior, The International Journal of Press and Politics, and the Journal of Political Marketing. Mona is the recipient of several grants and fellowships, including a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Stefan Pitschner

Associate Professor
Department of Economics

Professor Pitschner works on topics in macroeconomics, financial economics and corporate finance. His research has been published, e.g., in the Journal of Economic Theory and the American Economic Review. Professor Pitschner holds a PhD in Economics, Finance and Management from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Before joining Queens College, he was an Assistant Professor at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Jangwon Suh

Assistant Professor
Department of Accounting and Information Systems

Before joining Queens College, Jangwon Suh was affiliated with NYIT, LIU Post, and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, after earnings a Ph.D. from Baruch College. His teaching experience ranges from financial accounting to managerial accounting, auditing, data analytics, programming (Python), and AIS. Other than teaching, he is conducting research on financial accounting using data analytics. His research is published in Review of Accounting Studies, Accounting Horizons, and Journal of Business Finance and Accounting.

Ryan Sperry

Lecturer
Department of Sociology

Professor Ryan C. Sperry received his PhD from Columbia University in the Department of Sociology. His primary research interests include the areas of organizations, economic sociology, technology, and culture. His current work includes an association with the Queens Podcast Lab and a study conducted through the City University of New York. His current research focuses on the role of networks in facilitating or hindering innovation and the social relations that determine the success of podcasting enterprises. The study is based on interviews with industry practitioners who can share what they know about podcast creation.

Padmini Biswas

Lecturer
Department of Urban Studies

Padmini Biswas received her Ph.D. in urban planning from Columbia University, her master’s degree with distinction from the London School of Economics, a B.S. in civil engineering from the Cooper Union, and a B.A. in English from Vassar College. Dr. Biswas has held various leadership positions in the social justice space. She advanced diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives within New York State government, directed an undergraduate human rights education program that took students to Nepal, Jordan and Chile to broaden their perspectives on activism, and served as the Assistant Director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center. Dr. Biswas is the founding editor of SALT, a South Asian American community-based literary journal funded by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Dr. Biswas is currently designing a professional certificate in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to be offered through the Labor Studies program at Queens College.

Jian Xiao

Lecturer
Department of Accounting and Information Systems

Professor Xiao received her M.B.A. (Finance & Investment) and B.B.A. (Accounting Public) Cum Laude, from Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY). She is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) of New York State, Certified Management Accountant (CMA), and Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA). She is an Award-Winning Business Educator who teaches Data Analytics for Accountants, Governmental and Not-for-Profit Accounting and Auditing in the undergraduate and graduate programs. She is the recipient of the 2014 Dean’s Award for Adjunct Faculty Teaching Excellence of Fordham Gabelli.

Antonia Cucchiara

Lecturer
Department of Political Science

Professor Antonia Cucchiara received her Ph.D. in Politics from The New School for Social Research, The New School. She is an interdisciplinary researcher of contentious politics and social movement discourse in the United States, with her work drawing upon the fields of American politics, ethnic studies, transnational intellectual history, migration and diaspora studies, political sociology, labor studies, political communication, and Italian American studies. Her research employs a qualitative and interpretive approach to understanding the construction of resonant mobilizing discourse.

Lecturer

Sociology Department and SEEK Department