Faculty

Professor Anttila-Hughes received his PhD in Sustainable Development from Columbia University. His research focuses on understanding the social impacts of environmental processes, particularly those influenced by environmental degradation and climate change. Professor Anttila-Hughes' current research areas include: public health impacts of the climate; behavioral responses to new information about environmental risks; and determinants of the spread of environmental attitudes and ideas.

Rachel Brahinsky serves as director of the graduate program in Urban and Public Affairs. She also teaches in the undergraduate Urban Studies program. She earned her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research and teaching center around the challenges of race and inequality in the context of rapidly changing American cities. Her current projects are focused on the San Francisco Bay Area. View more information on Dr. Brahinsky’s publications and research.

Kathleen Coll is a political anthropologist whose research and teaching focuses on immigration politics and policies, cultural citizenship, and grassroots community organizing in the U.S., with special emphasis on the Bay Area. Her book Remaking Citizenship: Latina Immigrants and New American Politics (Stanford University Press, 2010) is an ethnography of San Francisco immigrant women’s experiences and activism in the context of hostile national immigration, welfare, and labor policies. Her...

Sergio De La Torre's project work has focused on issues regarding immigration, tourism, surveillance technologies, and transnational identities. These works have been exhibited in a variety of venues both national and international. He has received grants from the NEA, The Rockefeller Foundation, Creative Capital, the Potrero Nuevo Fund, and the Creative Work Fund, among others. De La Torre's latest project is MAQUILAPOLIS (City of Factories), an hour-long video documentary made in...

Roberto Gutiérrez Varea began his career in theater in his native Argentina. His research and creative work focuses on live performance as means of resistance and peacebuilding in the context of social conflict and state violence. Varea's stage work in the United States includes directing premieres of works by Migdalia Cruz, Ariel Dorfman, Cherrié Moraga, and José Rivera, among others. He is the founding artistic director of Soapstone Theatre Company, a collective of male ex-offenders and women...

Marco Jacquemet teaches courses in communication and culture, intercultural communication, geographies of communication, and justice and social change. His scholarship focuses on the communicative mutations produced by the circulation of migrants and media idioms in the Mediterranean area. His more recent book project is called Transidioma: Language and Power in the 21st Century. He is also present in Italian media activist networks, where he investigates the link between media and power.

Susana Kaiser teaches at the Media Studies Department. She earned her PhD from the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, her MA from the Department of Communication at Hunter College of the City University of New York, and her BA in Advertising from the Jesuit University of El Salvador, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, her country of origin. Before coming to USF she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on...

Dorothy Kidd received her PhD in Communication from Simon Fraser University. She has published in the area of political economy of media, media and social change and community media. She has also worked extensively in community radio production. Her areas of interest include democratic and participatory communications, media and globalization.

Professor Pedro Lange Churión is both an academic and a visual artist. He has written and directed various films, including Crocodile (USA, 2000). Based on a short story by Felisberto Hernández. This film received a Remmy Bronze award for best dramatic adaptation at the Houston International Film Festival (2001). He also wrote and directed Visitas (Colombia, 2005), a full-feature narrative film that explores violence in Colombia. This film has garnered recognition as "Official Selection" in...

Dr. Keally McBride joined the Politics department in Fall 2007. She received her graduate degrees at University of California at Berkeley with a focus in political theory, and is happy to be back in the Bay Area after teaching at Cornell University, Tulane, Temple, and the University of Pennsylvania. She has published three books, Collective Dreams: Political Imagination and Community, Punishment and Political Order, and with Margaret Kohn, Political Theories of Decolonization: Postcolonialism...

Noriko Milman received her BA in Women's Studies and Sociology, and her MA and PhD in Sociology, all from UCLA. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst before joining the faculty at USF in 2012. She currently teaches several courses, including Introduction to Sociology, Research Methods, Sociology of Education, and Urban Education. Prior to pursuing a doctoral degree, Noriko was a first-grade teacher in an urban school. She was named Educator of the...

Megan Nicely is an artist/scholar whose teaching and research integrate theory and practice. Her scholarship brings together experimental choreography, critical dance and performance studies theory, philosophy, cultural studies, and physical practices including modern/contemporary dance, Japanese butoh, yoga, and other somatic approaches. Her group Megan Nicely/Dance has performed on both US coasts, in the UK, and in Europe, and her writing has appeared in TDR: The Drama Review, Performance...

Tanu Sankalia is Associate Professor and Program Director of the interdisciplinary program in Urban Studies at the University of San Francisco where he teaches courses in urban planning and design, architectural and urban history, and architectural design. He was trained in urban design at UC Berkeley, and in architecture at the School of Architecture, Ahmedabad, from where he graduated with a gold medal for the best diploma thesis. Professor Sankalia's research interests cover areas of...

Cecília MacDowell Santos received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master in Law from the University of São Paulo. She joined the University of San Francisco in 2001, and since 2006 she is also a research member of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. She teaches courses on gender and development, globalization, sociology of law, and Brazilian culture and society. Her research focuses on legal mobilization within and...

Ronald Robles Sundstrom teaches for USF's Philosophy program, African American Studies program, and the Master of Public Affairs program for the Leo T. McCarthy Center of Public Service and the Common Good. He was awarded the 2008 Sankofa Faculty Award from USF's Multicultural Student Services, USF's 2009 Ignatian Service Award, and was a co-winner of the 2010 USF Distinguished Teaching Award. His areas of research include political theory, critical social and race theory, and African American...

Professor James Lance Taylor is from Glen Cove, Long Island. He is author of the book Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama, which earned 2012 "Outstanding Academic Title" - Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. (Ranked top 2 percent of 25,000 books submitted and top 8 percent of 7,300 actually accepted for review by the American Library Association). Rated “Best of the Best.” The hardback version sold out in the U.S. and the paperback version was...

Prof. Urrutia-Jordana earned her BA in Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, and her MA and PhD in Spanish Literature at Stanford University (1996). She has taught at the University of San Francisco since 1996 and has been a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain. Her first book, La poetización de la política en el Unamuno exiliado: De Fuerteventura a París Romancero del destierro, was published in 2003 by Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca...

Seth Wachtel is the Program Director for the Architecture & Community Design program at the University of San Francisco. He received his MArch from UC Berkeley in 1987 and has worked in architecture and construction in India, Colombia, Israel, Mexico, Nicaragua, Zambia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. His focus is low-income housing and the development of innovative construction techniques that produce sustainable and aesthetically and culturally appropriate buildings for human environments...

Professor Maggie Winslow is the Director of the Master of Science in Energy Systems Management. She received her PhD from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California at Berkeley and Master of Science from the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan. She spent nine years at Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco, a sustainability focused MBA and MPA program, teaching managerial economics and macroeconomics and serving as MBA program chair and academic dean...

John Zarobell is the Department Chair of International Studies at the University of San Francisco. Formerly, he held the positions of assistant curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and associate curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is a regular contributor to the San Francisco Art Quarterly (SFAQ) and the online journal Art Practical, has written for numerous exhibition catalogues and has published in Art History, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, and the Berkeley Review...

James Zarsadiaz is Assistant Professor of History and serves as Director of the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program. His research and teaching interests include urban and suburban studies, California and the U.S. West, Asian American history, and the twentieth-century United States. He received his PhD and MA in History from Northwestern University and his BA in American Studies and Political Science from George Washington University. Prof. Zarsadiaz was a Fellow at both the Smithsonian...