Faculty & Staff

Peter H. Hansen is Professor of History and Director of International and Global Studies at WPI. International and Global Studies brings together faculty from arts and sciences, business, engineering, and the global school to enrich students' global learning on campus and around the world. He enjoys teaching courses in history or international and global studies, seminars on sports or global studies, and working with students in WPI's project programs. He is director of the Copenhagen Project Center and has advised student projects in Bangkok, Copenhagen, London, Lyon, Morocco, Namibia, ...

Gizem Arslan's research and teaching interests include post-war literatures in German, French and Turkish, translation studies, migration studies, theories of language, literary-mathematical experiments, and writing systems of the world. She enjoys teaching German at all levels and learning new languages. Particularly important to her teaching are exploring connections between German and other languages, integrating culture and intercultural learning into her courses, and continually educating herself on diversity, equity and inclusion issues in language programs. Her current work in ...

I am a geographer with a focus on the cultural landscape, meaning landscapes that are shaped by people. I am interested in development, how and why places change, and why certain traditions endure. I study this mainly through vernacular architecture (traditional regional design). My research was based in the Indian Himalaya and explores what connections forest policy and cash crop markets have with the decline in architectural woodcarving and vernacular design. I hope to better understand how modernization and preservation can be balanced to sustain culturally distinct landscapes. Previous to ...

Dr. Boucher-Yip has taught in many parts of the world including Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, China, Laos, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She has taught communication skills and writing courses at university level for over a decade. Her teaching approach is informed by her own experience in language learning and with theories of second language acquisition and their pedagogical applications. Both her studies and her experience have taught her that there is no one method or idea that guarantees successful language learning. While the mastery of standard English is necessary, she ...

Crystal Brown Simard earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Oregon, specializing in Comparative Politics, International Relations, and Public Administration. She also holds a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Pennsylvania State University and a certificate in Data Analytics from Harvard University.She is an internationally focused scholar who examines the inclusivity of marginalized groups, including immigrants, people of color, and individuals of African descent/Black people, women, and other marginalized groups. As a computational social scientist, she employs ...

Grant completed his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of New Mexico with sub-field specializations in Comparative Politics and International Relations. His dissertation analyzed infrastructure investments and sustainable development in Brazil, focusing on the policymaking process in Brazil’s developmental state and the socio-environmental impacts of hydroelectric dams in the Amazon. His principal research interests include political economy, the environment, renewable energy, social welfare, democratic institutions, and populism. Currently, he is working on two manuscripts: a ...

Fabio is the director of the Venice Project Center (VPC) and Santa Fe Project Center (SFPC). In addition to a number of scientific papers, his work has been repeatedly featured in National Geographic magazine, MIT’s Technology Review magazine, the Smithsonian magazine, Wired, New Scientist and Science. He was also featured on RAI play, BBC Radio and in a National Geographic video dedicated to his work in his hometown of Venice, Italy.Fabio’s main research focus has been on complex emergent systems and in particular on the gradual and systematic accumulation of urban and environmental ...

John-Michael holds a diverse academic background with degrees in psychology, water management, environmental studies, and geography – which rightly embodies the interdisciplinary approach to research cultivated in the DIGS. His work follows a common theme that values community-driven and action oriented research to address complex development challenges related to sustainable livelihoods, informal economies, waste management, environmental contamination, community representation, and INGO legitimacy. Involving communities and local stakeholders within all phases of the research process is ...

Daniel DiMassa is a scholar of German literature and culture from the eighteenth century to the present. His research resides at the intersection of literature, religion, and aesthetics in the wake of the Enlightenment, with a particular interest in how literary texts participate in religious and mythical enterprises. His book, Dante in Deutschland: An Itinerary of Romantic Myth (Bucknell/Rutgers), is forthcoming in 2022.  In addition to teaching courses in German language, literature, and film, DiMassa is an avid participant in WPI's Global Projects Program. He has twice advised projects ...

I am an historian of 19th- and 20th-century U.S. history, with a special focus on imperialism, capitalism, and the Pacific Ocean. In my first book, Coconut Colonialism: Workers and the Globalization of Samoa (Harvard University Press, 2022), I argue that the globalization of Samoa at the turn of the twentieth century was driven by a diverse group of working people on and off the islands. Currently, I am doing research for my next book, "War Workers," which tells the global story of non-citizen civilians working for the U.S. military from the Civil War to Iraq. I have published on a ...

  Wen-Hua Du is an assistant teaching professor of Chinese in the Department of Humanities and Arts. Prior to joining WPI, she worked as a senior lecturer and coordinator of the Chinese Program at the Pennsylvania State University, University Park (2010-2017), and a visiting assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (2009-2010). Her expertise is in the areas of language teaching, curriculum design, and program development. Dr. Du has been an active participant in the SoTL communities in the field of Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL). She has also collaborated on two ...

Mohammed El Hamzaoui teaches academic writing to native and non-native speakers of English, Arabic as a foreign language to non-native speakers and ISE (Integrated Skills of English) courses to international students. Mohammed adopts an eclectic approach to teaching languages; he uses a communicative and interactive methodology to help students overcome persistent fears related to learning, speaking and writing in foreign languages. Also, as a first-generation college graduate, Mohammed relies on the intellectual and practical obstacles he faced to help students acclimate to different learning ...

I joined WPI in 2011 as a scholar and teacher with training in public health, environmental policy, and international development studies. My research and teaching interests focused on the environment-development nexus, where tensions between sustainability and livelihoods often lead to contentious policy debates. My work on soy production and land inequality, expert roundtables and certification, and sustainability rating systems for cities, advanced ideas around how global discourses about sustainable agriculture and sustainability indicators take shape, are mobilized, and have influence at ...

Katherine Foo, PhD MLA, is co-director of the Berlin Project Center and an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Integrated and Global Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Her research focuses on urban environmental governance and landscape visualization for social and environmental justice. She is passionate about fostering institutional change to empower community groups by building academic-civic partnerships.  Through engaged, inclusive practices like participatory mapping, scenario development, and design-build ...

John Galante’s interests are primarily in Atlantic History, Latin America, and Global Studies. At WPI, he teaches courses in History, International and Global Studies, and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. In addition to introductory level courses, he has designed and taught specialized courses and capstone Humanities seminars on Migration, Ethnicity and Race in the Americas, and Global Energy. His research primarily focuses on international migration and the patterns of homeland connection, diasporic consciousness, receiving-country adaptation, and ethnic notions of belonging associated ...

Emily Gioielli is a historian of modern European history, with a special focus on Central and Eastern European history, the history of gender and sexuality, and the history of violence. I am currently finishing a social history that traces women's involvement and the role of gender in the social and political revolutions that took place in Hungary during the long World War One period. I am also working on a project that brings together the social and environmental history of the Holocaust in Central Europe entitled "Cataclysm: An Environmental History of the Holocaust in Central Europe." ...

For twenty years I conducted research at Clark University on the social aspects of environmental risks, with a focus on the topics of risk communication, public trust, and vulnerability. After a brief sojourn at the EcoTarium (a museum of science and nature located in Worcester), I began teaching at WPI in 2006. I have taught more than 600 students in ID2050 and advised more than 100 IQPs in the UK (London and Worcester), US (Nantucket, Washington, DC, and Worcester), Australia, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, and Switzerland. As center director, I am responsible for identifying project topics and ...

Alexander Herbert is an expert in the history of the Soviet Union and Global Environmental History. His research examines the interrelations of science, technology, and environmental change in the late USSR. Alexander is additionally interested in the intersection of popular culture and education and has published two books: the first on the history of punk rock in the Soviet Union and Russia, and another that uses horror films in the late USSR to examine the anxieties and fears of late Soviet society. He has also taught classes on the history of capitalism, radical politics in Europe, film ...

Robert Krueger is a human geographer whose scholarship and teaching focus on creating sustainable, socially just, improvements to development projects in the global north and south. His work has taken him around the world. He has worked in countries in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, on issues of economic development and institutional change. His scholarship and teaching challenge conventional notions of economic development, economy-environment relationships, and social change. In his book, Adventures in Sustainable Urbanism (2019, SUNY Press, Krueger, Freytag and Mössner (eds)), ...

I am an economic anthropologist who conducts both interdisciplinary and applied research. I study global issues from an ethnographic perspective examining local phenomena and placing it within their global context. My work has covered a variety of topics from spirituality and health to remittance strategies of Peruvian migrants. My dissertation research, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, examined the use of microfinance loans on rural livelihoods in Nicaragua. My current work is on the social and solidarity economy and its intersection with sustainable development.I truly ...

Aarti Smith Madan is an Associate Professor of Spanish & International Studies in WPI’s Department of Humanities & Arts. In addition to directing the Buenos Aires Project Center and co-directing Latin American & Caribbean Studies, she’s advised three cohorts of junior-year IQPs in Puerto Rico (2012), Costa Rica (2015), and Australia (2023) as well as a number of Minor and Major Capstone projects in Spanish and International Studies. Aarti completed her undergraduate degrees in Spanish and English from Birmingham-Southern College, where she had her first forays into experiential ...

I am a medical anthropologist, global health researcher and feminist scholar, whose research focuses on issues of gender, sexuality and health. I am primarily interested in the HIV pandemic and have conducted research on HIV prevention and treatment in various countries in Africa. I have held teaching positions at the College of the Holy Cross (MA), where I taught undergraduate courses on global health (e.g., Intro to Global Health, Health and Development, Mixed-Methods in Health Research, HIV/AIDS in Global Perspective) and coordinated the health studies program. At Clark University (MA), ...

One of the most rewarding pleasures of teaching at WPI is the diversity of cultures you find in and around campus. My main goal is to broaden my students’ knowledge of Hispanic countries and promote cultural understanding inside and outside the classroom. I teach the importance of understanding different lifestyles and ways of expression in other parts of the world---differences that we can also find in each of the Hispanic countries. My courses include more than grammar, vocabulary, essays, speaking, and writing. I also teach culture and history (in Spanish) from around the world to my ...

Stephen McCauley is a geographer whose work focuses on exploring how cities change and how urban futures can be inclusive, green and resilient. His broad substantive interests include climate change preparedness, urban resilience, energy system innovation, community participation in environmental decision-making, citizen science, and GI Science for urban planning. His current work addresses urban heat island dynamics and green infrastructure and other planning interventions that can mitigate the vulnerabilities associated with extreme heat in cities. At WPI, Stephen co-directs (with Lorraine ...

My research centers around religion in North Africa and the Middle East with a focus on Islam; I approach the study of Islam through its representation in visual culture. My first book project, an outgrowth of my dissertation, focuses on recent fiction film by Moroccan women filmmakers as oblique forms of resistance to dominant narratives about Muslim women. My research tends to be very interdisciplinary: I draw on religion, cultural studies, feminist theory, film theory and affect theory. I hope that, in doing so, I can help introduce diversity into conversations about Islam, particularly the ...

Ashley Morin is a historian of modern Ireland specializing in the relationship between peace and conflict during the period associated with the Troubles. Her research adopts an interdisciplinary approach, prioritizing instances of community-based activism in cross-community peace efforts. Dr. Morin is especially interested in women’s activism during the conflict and has published research on the topic. She also engages with digital humanities in her research and is developing efforts to incorporate such practices into the courses she teaches. Prior to joining WPI, she taught classes on Irish ...

My scholarly and professional interests lie in three areas: new forms of narrative emerging in our multi-media age; comparative and environmental literature; and interdisciplinary pedagogy. Over the years, I have taught teaches a variety of writing and literature courses from The Elements of Writing and Introduction to Literature, to Moral Issues in the Modern Novel and The American Literature and the Environment. With Diran Apelian, I co-teach a Great Problem Seminar on Sustainable Development, currently focusing on Recycling of all classes of materials. As I enjoy interdisciplinary modes of ...

My areas of expertise in philosophy and social theory are in social and political philosophy, Marxism, global justice, development ethics, and also Critical Pedagogies. I teach philosophy courses, global studies courses, and for the Great Problems Seminars program (currently I co-teach the Seeking Sustainability and the Climate Change courses for this program).  In addition to a number of chapters in edited collections, my work can be found in journals such as Human Studies, The European Legacy, Crisis and Critique, Continental Thought and Theory, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, ...

Professor Radzicki is an economist and simulation scientist who directs WPI’s Complex Systems Laboratory as well as the university’s Program in Technology, Policy, and Sustainability. He has developed techniques for applying system dynamics computer simulation modeling to problems in complex socioeconomic systems, and created teachable and repeatable methods for turning these models into user-friendly games or “flight simulators” that can be used by those who did not participate in the creation of the models to understand and control their dynamics.System dynamics is an approach to social ...

Charlotte (Lottie) Richard is a historian specializing in transnational African Diaspora history with an emphasis on African American and Caribbean history in the era of the Long Freedom Movement. Dr. Richard’s scholarly focus is on the intersections of activism and political movements throughout the African Diaspora. Her work crosses geographical and geopolitical boundaries to connect movements, ideas, and struggles in the Caribbean, North America, and Africa. Dr. Richard’s research has been presented at international African Diaspora History conferences and has been published in ...

Professor Rivera has been conducting research on 19th- and 20th-century Spanish Caribbean literature and theories related to the exploration of limits or borders (i.e., the edges or places where multiple cultures touch or come into contact). He has been exploring how Caribbean traditional modes of representation have been restructured to significant changes in cultural, literary, and historical contexts. Professor Rivera’s focus is on studying how "marginal" groups (radical Caribbean male intellectuals and women writers) view themselves within those borders and devising new representational ...

 The overarching goal of my teaching and research is to contribute to an interdisciplinary understanding of environmental governance and policy. More specifically, I focus on the building of individual, organizational and institutional capacities to participate in collaborative efforts to address complex social and environmental sustainability problems through the application of science and technology.My academic and professional background includes experience in molecular biology, microbial ecology, wildlife biology, sustainable forestry and most recently environmental policy and ...

By training, I am a political historian of China and Japan. Coming to WPI has expanded how I view my own research and teaching and what can be done with them. I’ve led WPI’s efforts to build China-related programs for STEM students on campus and off. With like-minded colleagues I helped establish and now direct WPI’s East Asia Hub (formally China Hub), established and co-direct WPI’s Hangzhou and Taiwan Project Centers, and advise the Chinese Studies minor. With WPI’s student body in mind, I’ve worked to integrate science and technology into my teaching on the histories and cultures of East ...

Khalid Saeed is widely recognized for his work on the interface of economics and system dynamics. He has published two books and numerous articles on a variety of methodological, developmental and management agendas including sustainable agriculture, poverty alleviation, political instability, supply chain management and system dynamics modeling. His current focus is on operationalization of economic policy so it can be implemented through available managerial roles. Professor Saeed served as the head of social Science and Policy Studies department from 1997-2007. He previously taught at ...

 William San Martín (He/Him/El) is Assistant Professor of Global Environmental Science, Technology, and Governance in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is also a Scholar affiliated with the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN) at Brown University and a Research Fellow at the Earth Systems Governance Project at Utrecht University.William is an interdisciplinary scholar of global environmental science and governance. His work examines environmental justice and inequalities in Latin ...

Dr. Mimi Sheller is the Dean of The Global School and is an internationally recognized scholar and higher education leader, with fifteen years of executive leadership across academic units, research centers, and professional organizations. Prior to joining WPI, she was tenured Professor of Sociology, Head of the Sociology Department, and founding Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Dr. Sheller was awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa from Roskilde University, Denmark, in 2015, the Drexel Provost’s Award for Outstanding Career Scholarly ...

Ingrid Shockey is an environmental sociologist whose work concerns natural literacy and the interplay of human-wilderness relationships. These domains include topics in biodiversity loss, climate change perceptions, and our sense of place and identity with respect to the landscape. Her work has focused most recently on mountain ecologies and economies in the western Himalaya. She manages and curates two undergraduate student Project Centers, serving as co-director for the Wellington Project Center in New Zealand (since 2012) and directing the WPI-IIT Mandi India Project Center at the Indian ...

Dr. Gbetonmasse Somasse is an economist and applied econometrician with field experience as a development practitioner. He is  an Associate Professor of Teaching in the Department of Social Science and Policy Studies. Prior to joining WPI, he was an instructor at Clark University. He also served as senior economist statistician at the Central Bank of West African States and a consultant for the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the United Nations Development Program.His research is mostly policy-oriented and focuses on how economic theory and empirical ...

Sarah Stanlick, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies and the Director of the Great Problems Seminar at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She was the founding director of Lehigh University’s Center for Community Engagement and faculty member in Sociology and Anthropology. She previously taught at Centenary College of New Jersey and was a researcher at Harvard’s Kennedy School, assisting the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power. She has published in journals such as The Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, The ...

Prof Stoddard is a human-environment geographer who is interested in the intersection of nature, society, and justice, particularly in the context of climate change. She looks at the ways in which we can design for climate resilience, in terms of infrastructure, location specific practices, and through community resilience. Stoddard also looks at the vulnerability and resilience of food systems to disasters (climate, disease outbreaks, etc.), and the impacts for humans, animals, and ecosystems. She looks at the ways in which technology, policies, and social movements ...

Professor Stoloff’s research focuses on Chinese religious beliefs and practices from the late Warring States Period (ca. 475-221 BCE) to the Western Han dynasty (202 BCE-9 CE). Specifically, he studies the classical Daoist idea of wuwei (effortless action)

Sarah Strauss was born and raised on the east coast. During high school and college, she was deeply involved in biomedical research, and expected her career path to lie in this direction. She enjoyed the philosophical traditions, though, and so although she worked in molecular biology laboratories, she also majored in comparative religion. During her final year in college, she discovered medical anthropology, and that changed everything. A career in anthropology would allow her to pursue all of her research interests, from health and human biology to myth and religion. After graduating, she ...

I am an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Rhetoric. Before joining WPI, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. My work is animated by an intellectual curiosity with how ideas travel across time and space, and generate diverse practices of acting, seeing, and being in the world. I am especially intrigued by situations in which people come to ask new questions about themselves and others, in ways that require reconsideration of past experiences and imagining of future possibilities. Such situations, I believe, capture an important aspect of the human ...

 Seth has been part of the WPI community since 2001, as teacher, advisor, co-director of the Global Lab, and co-director of project centers. He is the co-Director of the Boston Project Center and was the co-Director of the Bangkok Project Center from 2011-2018. He enjoys exposing students to contemporary problems in environmental and public health policy making and challenging them to apply insights emerging from research to practical applications. He loves share his curiosity with students about the ways that people are impacted by different technological and natural ...

Huili Zheng is a scholar on late imperial Chinese literature and culture (1500-1895). Her research interests focus on late imperial Chinese literary culture and development of social, cultural and intellectual history, with a particular interest in issues of gender, ethnic/cultural identity, cultural politics of representation, and the relations of late imperial China to the formation of modern China. She is finishing a book manuscript on late imperial Chinese intellectuals’ changing conceptualizations of the world and China’s place in it. Professor Zheng is also interested in pedagogy of ...