UC Irvine School of Social Sciences

UCI social sciences is proud to have among its ranks two recipients of recent Celebration of Teaching Awards. The honors, awarded annually by the UCI Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation, recognize faculty, instructors and teaching assistants who have demonstrated excellence in undergraduate teaching at UCI. Congrats to Michael Lee, Professor and Chancellor’s Fellow, Cognitive Sciences, who is the Social Sciences Dean’s Honoree, and congrats to Jessica Taghvaiee, Graduate Student, Political Science, who is a Most Promising Future Faculty Member. More on their award-winning work below, and congrats to all of this year’s recipients!

www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-09-12-celebration-of-teaching

University of California, Irvine University of California UCI Department of Political Science UC Irvine Graduate Division

In late August, 25 students from Santa Ana Valley High School had the unique opportunity to visit the University of California, Irvine campus to explore majors and undergraduate resources within the School of Social Sciences. As part of the quarterly Choosing a Major Conference (CMC) series—an initiative spearheaded by UCI’s Center for Educational Partnerships (CFEP) and their Early Academic Outreach Program (EAOP)—the event offered a comprehensive look into UCI’s largest academic unit, which houses some of the most popular undergraduate majors on campus.

“The School of Social Sciences is vast, offering a wide array of majors and programs,” says Jeanett Castellanos, UCI social sciences associate dean of instruction and curriculum. “Providing an early glimpse into these options is key to helping students envision their academic and professional futures.”

More about the day-long conference and series below.

www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-09-06-choosing-a-major-conference

University of California UCI Alumni Santa Ana Unified School District

Meet Ka-eul Yoo, Assistant Professor, Global and International Studies, University of California, Irvine | Ph.D., UC Santa Cruz

Research interests: literary and cultural studies in Global Asias, disability justice, public health policy, war/empire studies, critical Korean studies

Ka-eul Yoo specializes in contemporary multi-ethnic U.S. and Global Asias literature and culture, focusing on disability justice, public health policy, and U.S. empire and transpacific violence. In particular, she concentrates on tracing the relationships between the genealogy of biopolitical precarity, U.S. imperial violence, and disability in the global South, shedding light on Cold War legacies of racism and ableism. Alongside her research projects, she continues her work as a Korean–English translator, specifically focusing on feminist multimedia art, activism, and scholarship related to disability activism and war violence in South Korea. As a scholar from South Korea, she views the translation process as crucial for bringing critiques of U.S. empire from the periphery to the core.

Beyond academic institutions, Yoo works alongside community organizers at both the local and transnational levels. Most recently, she collaborated with the Korea-Vietnam Peace Foundation, translating testimonies that detail civilian massacres by South Korean troops during the Vietnam War. She is also a core member of the Ending the Korean War Teaching Collective, a group of critical Asianists and Asian Americanists designing a public syllabus on the Korean War.

Yoo earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in English at Yonsei University, followed by her Ph.D. in Literature at UC Santa Cruz. She began her journey at UCI in 2022 with a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Asian American Studies. Keen to create a vibrant academic and collaborative environment, she looks forward to engaging with the UCI community to further explore and address the intertwined issues of race, war, and disability.

More - including a video interview - below.

https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-09-03-ka-eul-yoo.php

University of California

💙💛 💛💙

Meet Adaugo Pamela Nwakanma, Assistant Professor, Political Science | Ph.D., Harvard University

Research expertise: political economy of development, Africana studies, comparative politics, identity, gender, entrepreneurship

Pamela studies gender, political behavior and economic empowerment. Her current research looks at gendered pathways to political power, with a specific focus on social and economic factors that shape men and women's access to the political sphere through actions including interest in voting, running for elected office, engaging in protest, being part of local community organizing or other forms of political action.

Her work – funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) – has been published in journals such as Perspectives on Politics and Politics, Groups, and Identities, as well as edited volumes such as the Palgrave Handbook of African Women's Studies and Routledge's African Scholars and Intellectuals in the North American Academy: Reflections of Exile and Migration. Her interdisciplinary research has earned her recognition by the American Political Science Association, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the African Studies Association. Her work has also been featured in public media outlets such as Break the Boxes, Collateral Benefits, and Voyages Africana.

She earned her Ph.D. in political science at Harvard University and was previously a Leading Edge Fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies. She also recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University's Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute. She’s excited to join the UCI faculty and the UCI Department of Political Science particularly for its reputation for supporting junior faculty and their professional and personal development. She’s looking forward to collaborating with faculty and students who are working on cutting edge projects that explore society from different lenses, disciplinary backgrounds, and methodological approaches.

More - including a video interview with Pamela - below.

https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-09-03-adaugo-pamela-nwakanma.php

University of California, Irvine University of California, Irvine

Steve Borowski ’79 retired this June, after 45 years in investment management, during which he built two companies from the ground up and collected 8.5 million frequent flyer miles. Much of that success he credits to his training as a scholar-athlete at the University of California, Irvine, where he learned teamwork, time management, communication, multitasking and – perhaps most critically – a willingness to fail.

“I think one of the great things about being a student athlete is that you learn rejection, you learn how to lose. It's part of life,” he says. “Even the most successful hitters in baseball fail 70 percent of the time.”

With his career in investment management behind him, Borowski is homing in on new opportunities to make his mark and create positive change. He’s been actively engaged with his alma mater – particularly athletics and the School of Social Sciences where he’s a current founding member and past chair of the Board of Councilors, and member of the Dean’s Leadership Society. In 2021, he joined the board of trustees of the UCI Foundation where he and other community leaders advise university leadership on matters related to investments and philanthropy while mobilizing current and new supporters to help grow UCI’s endowment.

https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-09-05-steve-borowski

University of California UC Irvine Athletics UC Irvine Baseball UCI Alumni

Meet Bhash Mazumder, Professor, Economics, University of California, Irvine | Ph.D., UC Berkeley

Research interests: labor economics, education, health, economic history

Bhash is currently a senior economist and economic advisor in the economic research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He’ll be joining UCI in January 2025 as a professor of economics.

He specializes in several areas of research: intergenerational economic mobility, the historical causes of racial gaps in socioeconomic outcomes such as education and income, the effects of early life health on later life outcomes, and the financial importance of having access to health insurance. Recently, he’s been exploring the historical legacy of redlining and how maps created by a 1930s federal housing agency influenced the evolution of cities over the last century. His research has shown that redlining led to reduced access to credit and financial disinvestment in many communities. This, in turn, had significant consequences for American society, namely increased racial segregation, deteriorating housing markets, and diminished opportunities for success among children growing up in these neighborhoods.

His work has been published in leading academic journals including the Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, Quantitative Economics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics. His research has also been featured in the Chicago Fed Letter and Economic Perspectives.

Bhash earned his Ph.D. in economics at UC Berkeley. He’s looking forward to joining the UCI Department of Economics and the opportunity to shift to an academic setting. He’s excited to collaborate with interdisciplinary scholars working on topics in education, sociology and environmental policy. He’s passionate about UCI’s mission to serve first-generation college students and is eager to be a part of a worldclass university that provides opportunity for upward intergenerational mobility. As an outdoor rock-climbing enthusiast, Bhash is also looking forward to the mild year-round Southern California climate.

More - including a video interview with Bhash - below.

https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-09-03-bhash-mazumder.php

University of California

Meet: Olga Malkova, Assistant Professor, Economics | Ph.D., University of Michigan

Research interests: labor economics, demography and health

Olga is a new UCI economics assistant professor and current research fellow of the Institute of Labor Economics. She studies causal effects of social programs across the life cycle such as transfers to reduce the cost of contraception, short-term transfers immediately after childbirth, annual child credits, aid programs to reduce college costs and pension benefits.

Her findings have been published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Population Economics, and the National Tax Journal.

Olga earned her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. Prior to her UCI appointment, she was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Kentucky. She’s excited to join the economics department at UCI due to its strong applied microeconomics group and the availability of multiple weekly seminars that align with her interests. She’s looking forward to being a part of the department’s long tradition of training top-tier graduate students, and she’s planning to get involved with the work being done in the multidisciplinary Center for Population, Inequality and Policy.

More - including a video interview with Olga - below.

https://www.socsci.uci.edu//newsevents/news/2024/2024-09-03-olga-malkova.php

University of California University of California, Irvine

Meet: Anna Leshinskaya, Assistant Professor, Cognitive Sciences | Ph.D., Harvard University

Research interests: learning, relational reasoning, computational cognitive neuroscience, semantic memory, artificial intelligence alignment/interpretability

Anna studies the neural organization of conceptual knowledge and learning pathways that help us build episodic and semantic memory. Her work intersects important topics in neuroscience and artificial intelligence. As a new member of the University of California, Irvine faculty, she’ll be opening the Relational Cognition Lab where she will lead research on how we transform sensory experiences into abstract, relationally structured knowledge, and how this is made possible by the brain. She’s also deeply interested in the ways in which AI can benefit from the tools of cognitive science.

“Some of the issues we face in society today are how to understand and trust new rapidly developing neural networks, notably large language models,” she says. “Abilities that are deeply relational, like causal and moral reasoning, are some of the most fascinating and important topics to study in the emerging fields of AI, alignment and interpretability.”

Her previous work, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and John Templeton Foundation, has been published in journals such as Cerebral Cortex, Neuroscience and Philosophy, Cognition, the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and others.

Anna earned her Ph.D. in psychology – cognition, brain and behavior from Harvard University. Past professional posts have included postdoctoral fellowships at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for Neuroscience at UC Davis where she also served as an assistant project scientist before joining the AI Objectives Institute in San Francisco as a research lead in human cognition and AI. She’s looking forward to participating in the worldclass research happening within the Department of Cognitive Sciences and UCI’s centers and institutes that focus on the mind, brain and AI.

More - including a video with Anna - below.

https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-09-03-anna-leshinskaya.php

University of California

In their new book, The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers our Future (Polity), political scientists Jeffrey Kopstein, University of California, Irvine, and Stephen Hanson, William & Mary, argue for the defense of modern government against forces intent on its destruction. Below, the coauthors outline critical factors and actors contributing to the erosion of democratic institutions, the need for effective strategies that may reverse this slide, and what the future holds if current trends are left unchecked.

https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-09-04-kopstein-hanson-the-assault-on-the-state

University of California UCI Department of Political Science

Meet: David R. Agrawal, Professor, Economics | Ph.D., University of Michigan

Research interests: public finance, tax competition, fiscal federalism, mobility, sales and excise taxes

David studies local government policy making and tax competition. His work explores how businesses, people and economic activity relocate in response to taxes levied by cities, states and countries. Through targeted research, he investigates tax revenue consequences of interstate and interjurisdictional mobility.

He’s the co-editor of Policy Responses to Tax Competition (University of Chicago Press), which was supported by Arnold Ventures, and he’s currently editor-in-chief of the journal International Tax and Public Finance. He’s also on the board of editors for the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy; on the editorial advisory board of National Tax Journal, and an associate editor for Regional Science and Urban Economics. His work has been published in leading journals including the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, the Economic Journal, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Journal of Urban Economics, to name a few.

David earned his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan where he specialized in tax policy. Prior to his UCI appointment, he held professorial posts at the University of Georgia and University of Kentucky. He’s excited to join UCI’s highly ranked Department of Economics which has strengths in his key fields - public and urban economics. He’s looking forward to joining an excellent set of colleagues and graduate students and teaching UCI’s outstanding undergraduates.

More - including a video interview with David - below ⬇️

https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-09-03-david-agrawal.php

University of California University of California, Irvine

UC Irvine School of Social Sciences is excited to welcome 6 new faculty members this year! Coming from top-tier university and industry posts, their research interests span topics in AI, finance, economics, education, health, politics, cultural studies, and more. Over the next week, we'll be featuring each of our wonderful new professors. Be on the lookout for our soc sci shoutouts!⁠

University of California, Irvine University of California

🎙 In this episode of the Capitol Weekly podcast, University of California, Irvine sociology professor Edwin Amenta, author of When Movements Matter: The Townsend Plan and the Rise of Social Security (Princeton University Press), tells the story of the Townsend Plan, how it became a movement and how it changed the conversation about pensions in America and ultimately shaped the Social Security we know today.

Listen in: ⬇️

University of California Sociology, UC Irvine

The Townsend Plan: The forgotten movement that shaped Social Security - Capitol Weekly CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: In September 1933, in the depths of the Depression, Dr. Francis Townsend wrote a letter to the Long Beach Press-Telegram with an idea that would end the Depression and alleviate the endemic poverty for the nation's elderly. Two years later his idea was a bill in congress. Our...

The University of California, Irvine Logic & Philosophy of Science Summer Diversity Program recently concluded its third successful year supporting underrepresented students interested in graduate studies in logic and philosophy of science. The five-day residential program, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the UC Irvine School of Social Sciences and directed by LPS associate professor Lauren Ross, MD, Ph.D., offers participants a no-cost, on-campus opportunity to dive into complex philosophical topics, connect with leading scholars, and gain valuable insights into grad life.

This year’s cohort was the program’s largest since its founding in 2022, with 17 students coming from locations as near as Irvine and as far as the Netherlands, China, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. The group’s make-up, says Ross, is a direct reflection of the program's mission to cultivate a more inclusive and diverse field within philosophy of science.

“A main aim of our program is to provide much needed resources and support for students pursuing their interests in logic and philosophy of science,” says Ross. “Our cohort this year had especially wide-ranging interests and academic backgrounds, which led to fantastic discussions among the participants, grad students, and faculty.”

https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-08-26-lps-summer-diversity-program

University of California UC Irvine Graduate Division

Feeling groggy in the afternoon? Here’s how to nap the right way, according to University of California, Irvine cognitive scientist and sleep researcher Sara Mednick (courtesy of AP) ⬇️

University of California, Irvine University of California

Feeling groggy in the afternoon? Here’s how to nap the right way An afternoon nap can be refreshing, but experts say it also can help you at work or with other activities.

🎙 In this podcast with KPFA Radio – Against the Grain, Yousuf Al-Bulushi, University of California, Irvine global and international studies associate professor, lays out the operating principles, goals, and methods of Abahlali, one of the most well-known radical formations in all of Africa. Listen in ⬇️

University of California, Irvine University of California

The Shack Dweller Movement | KPFA How did residents of shack settlements in South African cities like Durban become a formidable political force? Yousuf Al-Bulushi lays out the operating principles, goals, and methods of Abahlali, one of the most well-known radical formations in all of Africa. Yousuf Al-Bulushi, Ruptures in the Afte...

Congrats to Jeffrey Rouder, UC Irvine cognitive sciences professor and Falmagne Endowed Chair, who's received the Psychonomic Society Best Article Award for his paper, "Why many studies of individual differences with inhibition tasks may not localize correlations," which appeared in the July 2023 issue of the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. His award-winning work highlights flaws in existing methods for testing cognitive control, or the ability to stay focused on a demanding task even in the face of distraction.

More:
https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-08-22-rouder-psychonomic-society-award

University of California University of California, Irvine

NATO wants to be a leader on climate security. In this piece for the Atlantic Council, University of California, Irvine political science professor Heidi Hardt and Ph.D. student Jacqueline Burns share next steps to get there.

University of California UCI Department of Political Science

NATO wants to be a leader on climate security. Here are the next steps to get there. To adapt to the impacts of climate change on global security, NATO must improve how it incorporates climate security into its training and operational planning.

Anthropology students present their research in poetry, plays and op-eds in Multimodal Anthropology with Roxanne Varzi, University of California, Irvine anthropologist. Learn more about the course, Varzi's methods and approaches below, courtesy of The Conversation US.

University of California

Anthropology students present their research in poetry, plays and op-eds in this course Students can play to their strengths in this anthropology course designed to teach them how to present research findings in ways other than a peer-reviewed paper.

Congrats to Anneeth Kaur Hundle, University of California, Irvine anthropology associate professor and Presidential Chair in Social Sciences to Advance Sikh Studies, who’s been named the recipient of the 2024 Frances M. Leslie DECADE Mentor Excellence Award! The honor, given by the UCI Office of Inclusive Excellence, recognizes exemplary work supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion in UCI's graduate programs. The award spotlights Hundle’s efforts to improve Ph.D. program climate, equity, and diversity as one of the school’s outstanding mentors in the Diverse Educational Community and Doctoral Experience program, established in 2010 by Frances Leslie, then-dean of UC Irvine Graduate Division for whom the honor is named.

More on her award-winning work below, and congrats again!

University of California

https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-08-14-anneeth-kaur-hundle-receives-decade-mentor-award.php

As a high school teacher and mayor of Palo Alto, California, Greer Stone ’10 seamlessly transitions from the classroom to political events such as visiting the White House, meeting with U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and hosting the Swedish Crown Princess. Stone’s career journey to politics, law and teaching all began at the UC Irvine School of Social Sciences.

“UCI is where I was first inspired to pursue a career in public service,” says Stone. “Observing the work the university does to bring positive change not only to Irvine but Orange County as a whole, impressed me during my formative years and energizes me now as mayor.”

Palo Alto, a city of 66,000 nestled in the heart of Silicon Valley, has been Stone’s de facto home for most of his life, although he could not always afford to live in the famously expensive community. As a child, he made an hour-long commute from rural Boulder Creek to attend Palo Alto public schools, where his mom was a teacher while his dad worked for the sheriff’s department at Stanford University.

By Stone’s own admission, he was not an outstanding student, only overcoming academic struggles with the help of caring teachers. He enrolled at a small private university in the Bay Area for one year, but transferred to UCI as a sophomore after visiting a friend and feeling perfectly at home.

“I absolutely loved the UCI campus and that feeling of being at a large university with all of the opportunities that it comes with, while still seeing the smaller communities that exist within that larger ecosystem,” Stone says. “That was the college experience I was searching for.”

Stone made lifelong friends at UCI, and regularly returns to campus for Homecoming and to catch up with friends in Orange County. But the academic impact of UCI was just as significant as the social one.

Says Stone: “UC Irvine completely changed my trajectory.”

https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-08-13-greer-stone-political-science-alumnus.php

University of California, Irvine University of California UCI Department of Political Science UCI Alumni City of Palo Alto - Public Agency

The economic disturbance known as mortgage-rate “lock-in” cost the US economy $20 billion over a one-year period starting in 2022, according to a working paper by Jack Liebersohn, University of California, Irvine economics, and Jesse Rothstein, UC Berkeley public policy and economics, published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Soaring mortgage rates a little over two years ago created strong disincentives for workers to move, since doing so would mean taking out new, larger mortgages. Higher home prices compounded the problem. That translated into an overall decrease in household mobility, which has economic consequences because it adds friction to the free flow of workers to job opportunities, write the authors.

University of California

Mortgage lock-ins cost U.S. economy $20 billion a year The economic disturbance known as mortgage-rate “lock-in” cost the US economy $20 billion over a one-year period starting in 2022, according to a working...

We need a new peace movement to prevent nuclear war: David Meyer, University of California, Irvine sociologist, explains in this piece for Jacobin magazine ⬇️

“It’s the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and tensions between nuclear powers are spiking again. Citizen movements against nuclear weapons have always been crucial to avoiding nuclear war, and we need them as much as ever.

Seventy-nine years after the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most of us rarely think about nuclear weapons. The oversight is understandable, but mistaken – and dangerous.

It’s understandable because while nuclear weapons are destructive and expensive, they seem like a distant risk. There are almost always more pressing or promising issues to attend to. But it’s dangerous to ignore them because an occasionally attentive public may be the main reason we’ve avoided a nuclear war thus far. Citizen movements against nuclear weapons during the Cold War helped significantly reduce nuclear risks. As global nuclear tension spikes again, we urgently need a renewed antinuclear movement.”

University of California Sociology, UC Irvine

We Need a New Peace Movement to Prevent Nuclear War It’s the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and tensions between nuclear powers are spiking again. Citizen movements against nuclear weapons have always been crucial to avoiding nuclear war, and we need them as much as ever.

According to a new UC Irvine study, black-owned banks protected black segregated neighborhoods against predatory lending practices in 2006 that led to the nation’s subprime mortgage crisis, but fell short of building black wealth. Findings, published in Social Science Research, suggest these financial institutions served as cultural assets during a period of intense racial targeting by subprime lenders, says author Asia Bento, University of California, Irvine sociology assistant professor, and, given their community embeddedness, could be sources tapped to increase future economic resilience and development in predominantly black neighborhoods.

www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-08-06-black-owned-banks-support-protective-credit-markets-but-are-not-a-vehicle-for-equity

University of California Sociology, UC Irvine

Congrats to Tony Smith, University of California, Irvine political science professor, who’s been named a recipient of the American Political Science Association LGBTQ Caucus Distinguished Career Service Award! The honor is bestowed annually to recognize recipients’ commitment to the subfield of Sexuality & Politics as well as to supporting LGBTQ+ affiliated issues within the discipline.

"For over 20 years, Tony has been a tireless advocate for the Caucus and Sexuality & Politics,” the award committee writes, highlighting his numerous leadership roles within the Caucus and APSA. “Even if not formally in leadership, Tony is a go-to advisor on pertinent issues affecting our organizations. He has been an active officer in the Caucus, on APSA Council, and other units, including as section chair for various conferences. He not only has a wide array of publications within the discipline, but he has also published extensively advocating for increased acceptance of Sexuality & Politics within Political Science.”

More on his award-winning service below, and congrats again, Tony!

www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-08-06-smith-recognized-by-apsa-lgbtq-caucus

University of California UCI Department of Political Science