Professor of English
Karp Hall 111
(518) 388-6119
burketta@union.edu
Department/Program: English
British Romantic Poetry and Prose; Victorian Poetry and the Novel; Literature and Science; Science and Technology Studies; Cinema and Media Studies; Digital Humanities.
Assistant Professor of Classics
Lamont House 206
(518) 388-7147
callaghg@union.edu
Classics, STS
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.
Assistant Professor of History
Lippman Hall 107
(518) 388-6242
chattops@union.edu
Department/Program: History, STS
South Asia, History of Science and Technology
I am a historian of South Asia. My research spans from colonialism to its aftermath, with particular interests in the political history of the region, urbanization, labor histories, caste and community histories, and the history of science and technology. My current book project studies the intersections between Science and Technology Studies and South Asian history, as they played out in transforming working class death rites in colonial Bombay and Calcutta. I am also revising two articles focused on anatomical education in colonial India.
Lecturer in Classical Archaeology
Lamont House 104
(518) 388-7186
commitoa@union.edu
Department/Program: Classics
Archaeology of the countryside, archaeological field survey, environmental archaeology, urban biography, social resilience, nostalgia.
Associate Professor of Political Science
Director, Asian Studies
Lippman Hall 211
(518) 388-6361
dallasm@union.edu
Department/Program: Political Science, Asian Studies
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.
Professor of Geology
F.W. Olin Center 317
(518) 388-6517
garverj@union.edu
External Website: John I. Garver
Department/Program: Geology, ESPE
Tectonics, sedimentation, Mohawk River, landslides, ice jams
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
Carl B. Jansen Professor of Engineering
F.W. Olin Center 102D
(518) 388-6515
ghalya@union.edu
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
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.
Assistant Professor of History
Lippman Hall 103
(518) 388-7066
kuerstes@union.edu
History, STS
Medieval History
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Bailey Hall 208A
(518) 388-6674
plofkerk@union.edu
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!).
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
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.
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Steinmetz Hall 223
(518) 388-6374
webbn@union.edu
External Website: website
Department/Program: Computer Science, Data Analytics
Natural language processing; social robotics; computer science education.
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
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.