Faculty | Division of Social Sciences

Faculty in the Social Sciences provide an outstanding context for research and learning for more than 6,500 undergraduates and nearly 400 graduate students in 12 departments. The student experience is enriched by faculty diversity, not just diverse in terms of race and gender but a faculty that demonstrates a diversity of talents, teaching approaches, and research interests.

Social Scientists bring new discoveries to the forefront: communicating critical perspectives on social, political, and economic issues that challenge contemporary society; providing communities and policymakers with alternative visions of how to bring about social change; and making connections between data and behavior.

Faculty research vital issues such as globalization; the link between science, technology, sustainability and social policy; modes of conflict and communication within and between societies; and how the economy is affected by governmental decisions. The faculty's interdisciplinary approach to society, culture, economics, politics, ethnicity, and gender offers students a rich understanding of the world.

new
faculty

Alexander Cho
Assistant Professor
Asian American Studies
Debanuj DasGupta
Assistant Professor
Feminist Studies
Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky
Assistant Professor
Global Studies
Kristy Hamilton
Assistant Professor
Communication
Celia Herrera Rodriguez
Lecturer
Chicana/o Studies
Ricado Jacobs
Assistant Professor
Global Studies
Tae-Yeoun Keum
Assistant Professor
Political Science
Dana Kornberg
Assistant Professor
Sociology
Yader R. Lanuza
Assistant Professor
Sociology
Daniel Masterson
Assistant Professor
Political Science
Muniba Saleem
Associate Professor
Communication

Awards, Honors and Notable Achievements in 2020-21

Tamara Afifi, Communication, International Communication Associations’s Interpersonal Division John Garrison Memorial Award for Best Applied Manuscript at 2021 Conference

Walid Afifi, Communication, Elected as 2nd Vice President of the National Communication Association (NCA); Elected Fellow of the International Communication Association; UCSB Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award

Amit Ahuja, Political Science, New Foundation Book Prize for 2020 recipient for "Mobilizing the Marginalized: Ethnic Parties Without Ethnic Movements"

Amy Boddy, Anthropology, Faculty Career Development Award recipient for "Maternal-Fetal Crosstalks: Investing the Role of Maternal Immune Tolerance and Fetal Microchimerism in Maternal Health and Disease"

Michelle Brown, Anthropology, Faculty Career Development Award recipient for "Infrasonic Communication in a Cryptic Primate"

Micaela Diaz-Sanchez, Chicana/o Studies, Regents' Humanities Faculty Fellowship recipient for "Between Nation and Diaspora: Chicana and Mexicana Feminist Performance"; National Association of Chicana and Chicano Scholars (NACCS) Antonia I. Castaneda Prize for book chapter, "Rebozos, Huipiles y Que? Chicana Self-Fashioning in the Academy"

Norah Dunbar, Communication, Elected Fellow of the International Communication Association

Andrew Flanagin, Communication, Elected Fellow of the International Communication Association

San Juanita Garcia, Chicana/o Studies, Regents' Junior Faculty Fellowship recipient for "UndocuAging: A Binational Study on Older Mexican Undocumented Migrants and Deportees' Mental Health"; Faculty Career Development Award recipient for "Vicarious 'Illegaliity': The Spillover Consequences of Living a Deportation Threat on Mexican Origin Women's Stress and Mental Health"

Jennifer Kam, Communication, co-recipient of the Top Paper Award, Health Communication Division of the National Communication Association for "The importance of norms and efficacy in predicting undocumented college students' intentions to talk to an on-campus mental health professional"

Young Ji Kim, Communication, co-recipient of the Dennis Gouran Research Award from the Group Communication Division of the National Communication Association for "Conceptualizing online groups as multidimensional networks"

Andy Merolla, Communication, UCSB Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award

Julia Morse, Political Science, Faculty Career Development Award recipient for "All Talk And No Action? Populist Challenges to International Organizations"

Raquel Pacheco, Anthropology, Faculty Career Development Award recipient for "Re-making the Peasant Countryside: The Civilizing Project of Gender Progress in Neoliberal Mexico"

Elana Resnick, Anthropology, Faculty Career Development Award recipient for "Alchemy at Its Limits: Waste, Race, and Radical Transformation"

Daina Sanchez, Chicana/o Studies, 2021-22 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship

Michael Stohl, Communication, Elected Fellow of the International Communication Association

Sharon Tettegah, Black Studies, co-recipient of the Google Research Award for Inclusion and Research for "Iterative Design of a Black Studies Research Computing Initiative through 'Flipped Research'; invited to be a fellow in the third cohort of the NSF-funded Aspire Alliance's institutional Change Network (ICN) IAspire Leadership Academy; Margaret T. Getman and William J. Villa Service Award

France Winddance Twine, Sociology, co-recipient of the American Sociological Association's Race, Gender, and Class Section's 2020 Distinguished Career Award

Rene Weber, Communication, 2021 Klaus Krippendorff Book Award from the International Communication Association’s Information Systems Division for their "Handbook of Communication Science and Biology" (Routledge)

Endowed Chairs

At UC Santa Barbara, philanthropic support is central to maintaining the quality of teaching, research, and public service. One of the most important types of gifts to higher education is an endowed chair, which provides research funding and support for instruction that help us recruit and retain the world's finest scholars. You can review the current array of endowed chairs below.