Every fall, Arts & Sciences welcomes new faces to our community. In addition to a talented group of undergraduate and graduate students, this year's recruits include over 30 new faculty members.
"I'm happy to welcome this large and outstanding group of new faculty," says Barbara Schaal, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences. "The work they do will contribute greatly to our ongoing efforts in teaching and research across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities."
This week, we are highlighting our new social science faculty. Please read below to discover their varied research interests and professional backgrounds. You can read more about our new humanities faculty and our new natural science faculty in our earlier features.
Anthropology
Adam van Casteren, PhD, joins the department of anthropology as a lecturer. His research focuses on experimental solid biomechanics. He is also interested in the physics of the natural environment that animals live in and interact with, developing a greater understanding of how organisms are adapted to, interact and perceive the physical world. Currently, he is focused on dental form and function. Most recently, he served as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Weizmann Center for Integrative Archaeology and Anthropology. He earned his doctorate from the University of Manchester, UK.
Jake Lulewicz, PhD, joins the department of anthropology as a lecturer. He is an archaeologist whose research explores sociopolitical networks, collective action, and social movements across eastern North American roughly 1,000 years ago. He earned his doctorate from the University of Georgia.
Andrea Murray, PhD, joins the department of anthropology as a lecturer. Her research interests include tourism, sustainable development, political ecology, and island vulnerabilities. Her fieldsites include the islands of Okinawa (Japan) and the Turks & Caicos Islands (Caribbean). Previously, she served as an associate in research at the Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies at Harvard University. She earned her doctorate in social anthropology from Harvard University.
Political Science
Christopher Lucas, PhD, joins the political science department as an assistant professor. His research focuses on political methodology and the political economy of information and media. His current projects include the development of models and tools to analyze text, audio, image, and video data. Christopher's work has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Experimental Political Science, and Political Analysis, and received an award from the Society of Political Methodology. He earned his doctorate from Harvard in May 2018.
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Clara Wilkins, PhD, joins the psychological and brain sciences department as an assistant professor. She is a social psychologist whose research examines prejudice, stereotyping, and the self. She explores how social change (e.g. racial and gender progress) affects high-status groups’ perceptions of victimization. She also examines how variation in racial and ethnic minorities’ physical appearance shapes stereotyping and identification. Wilkins directs the Social Perception and Intergroup Attitudes (SPIA) Lab at WashU. She earned her doctorate from the University of Washington before joining the faculty at Wesleyan University.
Sociology
Cynthia Feliciano, PhD, joins the sociology department as a professor. Her research investigates the development and consequences of group boundaries and inequalities based on race, ethnicity, class, and gender. This work primarily, but not exclusively, focuses on how descendants of Latin American and Asian immigrants are incorporated in the United States. Feliciano is the author of Unequal Origins: Immigrant Selection and the Education of the Second Generation (LFB Scholarly 2006) and over two dozen peer-reviewed journal articles. She earned her doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles, and has been a fellow of the Ford Foundation, the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation.
