Core Faculty
Sean T. Mitchell, Ph.D., Anthropology, Chicago, 2008
Director, Master’s Program in Peace and Conflict Studies
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Inequality, Violence, Utopia, Social Theory, Brazil
Sean T. Mitchell is a sociocultural anthropologist. His ethnographically-based work focuses on the politics of inequality, particularly in Brazil. He has written about space travel, the formation of political consciousness, comparative class and race politics, US empire, war and violence, the politics of anti-corruption, utopia, and other related (and seemingly unrelated) topics. The thread that runs through all Mitchell's work is the attempt to understand how and why people conceptualize and act upon inequality in ways that change historically.
Zahra Ali, Ph.D., Sociology, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2015
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Women, gender and feminisms; Youth, civil society, social and political movements in contexts of war and conflict; Contemporary Islam(s), Islamisms and Muslim communities
Zahra Ali is a sociologist, her research explores dynamics of women and gender, social and political movements in relation to Islam(s), the Middle East and contexts of war and conflict with a focus on contemporary Iraq. She has conducted in depth ethnographic research among women, civil society and youth organizations in Iraq. She is also interested in Islam(s) in diasporic contexts and its transnational dynamics and she has conducted ethnographic fieldwork among diasporic Muslim communities in France and in the UK. Her book Women and Gender in Iraq: between Nation-building and Fragmentation (Cambridge University Press, 2018) is a sociological study of Iraqi women’s social, political activism and feminisms through an in-depth ethnography of post-2003 Iraqi women’s rights organizations and a detailed research on Iraqi women’s social, economic and political experiences since the formation of the Iraqi state.
Ira Cohen, Ph.D., Sociology, Wisconsin-Madison, 1981
Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology; Graduate Program in Sociology, Rutgers-New Brunswick
Ira Cohen (Ph.D. Wisconsin) teaches Classical and Contemporary Theories of Social Order and Change in Modernity. Professor Cohen has published extensively in classical and contemporary social theory. His teaching interests include the works of Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx. Max Weber, George Simmel. Emile, Durkheim, Karl Polanyi, Michael Mqann, Theta Skocpol, Anthony Giddens. Jṻrgen Habermas and Pierre Bourdieu. Professor Cohen has been a guest lecturer at a number of European and American universities. He has just completed a new book on the sociology of solitary action.
Christopher Duncan, Ph.D., Anthropology
Professor of Anthropology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Religious violence, Forced migration, Reconciliation, Post-conflict dynamics, Southeast Asia
Christopher Duncan is an anthropologist who studies the role of religion in collective violence, particularly in Southeast Asia. He has conducted ethnographic research on communal violence in the eastern Indonesian province of North Maluku since 2000. His research interests also include indigenous rights and the role of indigenous cultural institutions in efforts at conflict reconciliation. He is the author of Violence and Vengeance: Religious Conflict and Its Aftermath in Eastern Indonesia (Cornell, 2013) and editor of Civilizing the Margins: Southeast Asian Government Policies for the Development of Minorities (Cornell, 2004).
R. Brian Ferguson, Ph.D., Anthropology, Columbia, 1988
Professor of Anthropology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology; Rutgers Division of Global Affairs
War, Political Violence, State-Tribe interaction, Policing, Organized Crime, Human Nature
R. Brian Ferguson received his PhD from Columbia University in 1988, for a study of economic and social change in a Puerto Rican village. Since then his primary area of research has been war and political violence. A generalist, he has published on war in “tribal” societies and among ancient states, archaeological evidence regarding the origins of war, large-scale identity-linked violence in the contemporary world, recent U.S. military demands for cultural knowledge, human nature and war, and anthropological theory about war. He is the author of Yanomami Warfare: A Political History (School of American Research 1995) and editor of Warfare, Culture, and Environment (Academic Press 1984), War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare (with Neil Whitehead, School of American Research, 1992), and The State, Identity and Violence: Political Disintegration in the Post-Cold War World (Routledge 2003). He is currently working on a book that examines theories about human nature and aggression through reports about chimpanzees in the wild. Other interests are culture and biology, policing, and the development of organized crime in New York history.
Alexander Hinton, Ph.D., Anthropology, Emory, 1997
Founder and Director, Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution and Human Rights
Professor of Anthropology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology; Rutgers Division of Global Affairs
Genocide, Political Violence, Transnational Justice, Human Conflict Resolution, Human Rights
Alex Hinton is Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights. He is the author of the award-winning Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide (California, 2005) and six edited or co-edited collections. In recognition of his work on genocide, the American Anthropological Association selected Hinton as the recipient of the 2009 Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology. He is currently President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and a Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Lynn M. Kuzma, Ph.D., The Ohio State University
Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Lynn Kuzma is Associate Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the International Institute of Peace. Her major areas of study and publication include United States Foreign Policy, Terrorism, Human Rights, Conflict Resolution and the United Nations. Her interest in pedagogy, highlighted in her edited book, The New International Studies Classroom, Active Teaching Active Learning, civic engagement and service learning earned her numerous teaching and community awards.
Jamie Lew, Ph.D., Sociology and Comparative Education, Columbia, 2000
Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology; Program in Urban Systems
Comparative and International Education, Urban, Immigration, Race, Ethnicity, International Migration and Globalization
Jamie Lew’s research focuses on international migration, race, and education. Her work includes examining integration of immigrant children into host society and schools, immigrant and refugee education policy, and international education reform. She is particularly interested in examining how race and ethnic relations, social networks, and schooling policies impact social mobility of immigrants and their children in the U.S. context. In addition to her research in the U.S., she has been involved in refugee and international human rights programs in various countries in Asia to develop programs on gender equity and equality, peace education, teacher education research, and democratic participation in school governance.
Isaias Rojas-Perez, Ph.D., Anthropology, Johns-Hopkins, 2010
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Violence, The State, Forensic Anthropology, Human Rights, Post-Conflict Recovery
Isaias Rojas-Perez (PhD Johns Hopkins University) specializes in legal anthropology, anthropology of violence, human rights studies, and Latin American studies. His work focuses on the broader ethical and political question of how contemporary societies recover from devastating violence. His research interests include transitional justice, memory and mourning, forensic exhumation of mass graves, and prosecution of state atrocity in post conflict societies. He has conducted ethnographic work among Quechua speaking victims of state crime and relatives of the disappeared by the state during the counterinsurgency campaign of the 1980s in the Peruvian Andes. His academic work also draws from a long term experience in human rights activism in Peru.
Kurt Schock, Ph.D., Sociology, Ohio State, 1995
Associate Professor of Sociology; Co-Director, The International Institute for Peace; Department of Sociology and Anthropology; Rutgers Division of Global Affairs
Civil Resistance, Social Movements, Conflict Transformation
Kurt Schock’s research seeks to understand how civil resistance movements challenge political oppression, economic exploitation, and social injustice. He has studied pro-democracy movements in authoritarian regimes and land reform movements in the global South. His publications are numerous including journal articles and book chapters on social movements, nonviolent resistance, and political conflict. His book, Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies (University of Minnesota Press, 2005), was awarded Best Book of the Year by the Comparative Democratization section of the American Political Science Association, and published in Spanish as Insurrecciones No Armadas: Poder Popular en Regimenes No Democráticos (Editorial Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, Colombia, 2008). He currently serves as the Convener of the Nonviolence Commission of the International Peace Research Association, and as an advisor to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.
Genese Marie Sodikoff, Ph.D., Anthropology, Michigan, 2005
Acting Chair and Associate Professor of Anthropology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Rutgers Division of Global Affairs
Conservation and Conflict, Environmental Justice, Africa and the Indian Ocean
Genese Marie Sodikoff is a cultural anthropologist whose research examines conflicts over natural resources, the social effects of biodiversity loss and mineral extraction, and labor-management disputes in the conservation and development sector in Madagascar. She has worked in the Comoro Islands as an environmental educator and in Madagascar as a facilitator of grassroots, participatory strategies for sustainable development. She is the author of Forest and Labor in Madagascar: From Colonial Concession to Global Biosphere (IUP 2012), and editor of The Anthropology of Extinction: Essays on Culture and Species Death (IUP 2012). Her current project focuses on the labor network of ilemite mining, exportation, and processing, and on rural displacement and conservation offsets in southeastern Madagascar.
Associate Faculty
Ousseina Alidou, (New Brunswick) Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures, Director of the Center for African Studies
Ulla Berg, (New Brunswick) Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies, Department of Anthropology
Mobility and Transnational Migration, Media and Technology, Ritual and Performance, The Andes, US-Latinos Mobility and Transnational Migration, Media and Technology, Ritual and Performance
Paul Boxer, (Newark) Department of Psychology.
Development of Aggression across the Lifespan, Ecological Models of Human Development, Violence and Conflict in the Social Ecology
Ethel Brooks, (New Brunswick) Departments of Women’s and Gender Studies, Sociology
Romani Studies, Gender, Race, Labor, Critical Political Economy, Testimony
Susan Carruthers, (Newark) Department of History, Division of Global Affairs
International History
Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia, (Newark) School of Public Affairs and Administration, Division of Global Affairs
Security (US-Europe), Immigration (US-Europe) Integration of Minorities (US-Europe), Nation Building, Racism and Discrimination
Ko-Lin Chin, (Newark) School of Criminal Justice
Gangs, Organized Crime, Human Smuggling and Trafficking, Drug Markets
Jean-Marc Coicaud, (Newark) Division of Global Affairs, School of Law
Law and Politics, Global Ethics, History of Ideas, Comparative Politics, Europe, U.S., Latin America, Asia
Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi, (New Brunswick) Department of Anthropology
Violence and Conflict, Religion and Ritual, Psychoanalysis
Daniel Goldstein, (New Brunswick) Department of Anthropology
Human Rights, Security, Violence, Urban Life, Transnational Migration
Dorothy Hodgson, (New Brunswick) Department of Anthropology
Gender Justice, Social Movements, Ethnicity, Africa
Adile Ahmad Haque, (Newark) School of Law
International Criminal Law, Law of Armed Conflict, Ethics of Armed Conflict, Islam, Secularism and Human Rights
Sanford Jaffe, (New Brunswick) Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, Bloustein School
Fostering Collaborative, Non-adversarial Processes for Developing Public Policy, Providing Technical Assistance to Agencies and Others to Advance Collaborative Undertakings, Facilitating Complex Public Policy and Planning Collaboration
Les Kennedy, (Newark) School of Criminal Justice, Division of Global Affairs
Public Security, Computational Criminology, Global Risk Assessment
Gabriela Kütting, (Newark) Department of Political Science, Division of Global Affairs
Global Environmental Politics, Environmental Justice, Consumption, Global Political Economy
Jack Levy, (New Brunswick) Department of Political Science
Causes of Interstate War, Foreign Policy Decision-Making, Political Psychology, Qualitative Methodology, International History
Neil Maher, (Newark) Federated History Department Rutgers Newark-NJIT
Environmental History, Urban Environmental History, Political History, Landscape Studies
Manus Midlarsky, (New Brunswick) Department of Political Science
Mass Violence, Genocide, Protracted Intrastate Conflict, Interstate War, Political Psychology
Eduardo Moncada, (Newark) Department of Political Science
Urban Violence, Political Economy, Democracy
Kusum Mundra, (Newark) Department of Economics, Program in Women and Gender Studies, Center for Migration and the Global City
Immigration, Terrorism and Conflict, Gender, Econometrics
Simon Reich, Department of Political Science, Division of Global Affairs
Human Security, Child Soldiers, Human Trafficking, Immigration and Security, Power Transitions in the Global System
Norman Samuels, (Newark) Department of Political Science, School of Criminal Justice, Division of Global Affairs
National and Global Security, Terrorism
Carlos Seiglie, (Newark) Department of Economics
Defense Economics, International Conflict, Game Theory, Military Expenditures, Civil War
Linda Stamato, (New Brunswick) Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, Bloustein School
Decision-making in Negotiations and Collaborations, Barriers to Effective Negotiations, Decision Making Process on Outcomes, Theoretical and Practical Considerations in Intractable Controversies of Public Decision-Making