2023-24 Steering Committee

ANDREW BURKETT

Professor of English

Karp Hall 111
(518) 388-6119
burketta@union.edu

Department/Program: English

Research interests

British Romantic Poetry and Prose; Victorian Poetry and the Novel; Literature and Science; Science and Technology Studies; Cinema and Media Studies; Digital Humanities.

GREGORY CALLAGHAN

Assistant Professor of Classics
Lamont House 206
(518) 388-7147
callaghg@union.edu
Classics, STS

Research interests

History of Archaic and Classical Greece, Hellenistic Aegean, and the Roman Republic; interstate relations; memory studies; social network analysis; digital humanities; Greek architecture and epigraphy.

SOHINI CHATTOPADHYAY

Assistant Professor of History

Lippman Hall 107
(518) 388-6242
chattops@union.edu

Department/Program: History, STS

ANGELA COMMITO

Lecturer in Classical Archaeology

Lamont House 104
(518) 388-7186
commitoa@union.edu

Department/Program: Classics

Research interests

Archaeology of the countryside, archaeological field survey, environmental archaeology, urban biography, social resilience, nostalgia.

MARK DALLAS

Associate Professor of Political Science
Director, Asian Studies

Lippman Hall 211
(518) 388-6361
dallasm@union.edu

Personal Website

Department/Program: Political Science, Asian Studies

Research interests

Comparative and International Political Economy, China, Economic and Political Development and Public Policy, Trade, FDI and Foreign Economic Policy, High-tech Development and Policy, East Asian Regionalism, Security.

JOHN I. GARVER

Professor of Geology

F.W. Olin Center 317
(518) 388-6517
garverj@union.edu

External Website: John I. Garver

Department/Program: Geology, ESPE

Areas of expertise

Tectonics, sedimentation, Mohawk River, landslides, ice jams

Research interests

Primary interests are focused on low-temperature thermochronology, flood hazards, watershed analysis, the sediment record of environmental change, and the systematics of zircon and fission track dating. The main research focus in the area of tectonics is on the tectonic evolution of orogenic belts in the Pacific Rim using thermochronology, structural and basin analysis. In the last few years this research has focused on the thermochronologic evidence of the exhumation of orogenic belts. Research in the Mohawk watershed is directed at understanding hydrology, sediment budget, climate change in the watershed. Part of this focus has been in the timing and occurrence of landslides and on the effect of ice jams on flooding.

Field Areas: Pacific Rim, including Alaska; Mohawk watershed

ASHRAF GHALY

Carl B. Jansen Professor of Engineering

F.W. Olin Center 102D
(518) 388-6515
ghalya@union.edu

MELINDA A. GOLDNER

Professor of Sociology
Chair of the Department of Sociology

Lippman Hall 217
(518) 388-6425/629
goldnerm@union.edu

Department/Program: Sociology, American Studies, Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies

Research interests

Professor Goldner studies a range of health care issues and health social movements, such as online health searching and the complementary and alternative medicine movement. Her work has been published in a variety of journals, including Sociology of Health & Illness, Information, Communication and Society, Research in the Sociology of Health Care and Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change. She is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine, a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal. She teaches courses on medical sociology, public health, global health, social movements, sociological theory and gender.

SARINA KUERSTEINER

Assistant Professor of History
Lippman Hall 103
(518) 388-7066
kuerstes@union.edu
History, STS

Areas of expertise

Medieval History

KIM PLOFKER

Associate Professor of Mathematics

Bailey Hall 208A
(518) 388-6674
plofkerk@union.edu

Areas of interest

I study the historical development of math, astronomy and related subjects, mostly in Sanskrit, Arabic and Latin texts from before the twentieth century. Research travel takes me most often to India, where there are tens of thousands of manuscripts of little-known early scientific works that I use in piecing together this history. Topics I’ve published on include the early history of numerical approximation methods in Sanskrit texts, different approaches to spherical trigonometry in Islamic and Indian astronomy, and Euler’s study of Indian calendar computations. These days I’m collaborating with a colleague in New Zealand on a study of algorithms in Indian astronomical tables; we’re hoping to break out some of the work into undergraduate research projects (no Sanskrit knowledge required!).

MARK WALKER

John Bigelow Professor of History
Director of General Education

Lippman Hall 216
(518) 388-6994
walkerm@union.edu

Department/Program: History, General Education, Academic Affairs

Research interests

I research and publish on twentieth-century science, including in particular science and technology under National Socialism, and comparisons of science and technology in different political, cultural, and ideological contexts.

NICK WEBB

Associate Professor of Computer Science

Steinmetz Hall 223
(518) 388-6374
webbn@union.edu

External Website: website

Department/Program: Computer Science, Data Analytics

Areas of interest

Natural language processing; social robotics; computer science education.

KIRK WEGTER-McNELLY

Dona and Marshall Robinson Assistant Professor of Science, Philosophy and Religion Program in Religious Studies

Lamont 203
(518) 388-6214
wegtermk@union.edu

Department/Program: Religious Studies

Areas of interest

I am a theologian who studies how cultural developments, especially those related to the sciences, affects religious beliefs and behaviors. I have taught previously at Manhattan College and Boston University. My courses typically tend to focus on the relationship between the religious dimensions of life, on the one hand, and some prevalent aspect of contemporary culture, such as science, food, or literature, on the other hand. I am currently a Research Associate at the Institute for the Bio-Cultural Study of Religion, where I am working on a novel characterization of the relationship between religion and science through an investigation of the controverted nature of the discipline of economics.