This spring, the Center was abuzz with interviewing candidates for new positions. We ended this very busy year with three new colleagues joining us in fall. We are thrilled to introduce our new colleagues!
Dr. Nilufer Akalin is a critical health studies scholar whose areas of expertise include migration studies, intersectionality theory, and critical race theory. Her teaching expertise includes health inequality and self-care; gender, health, and medicine; and social theory. Her research focuses on the interplay of immigration status and race and how they are treated in the healthcare system to produce health inequality in the United States. Dr. Akalin will bring her expertise in health equity and justice to teaching courses such as Introduction to Health Disparities and the practicum for the Center’s Health Disparities in Society minor.
Dr. Hilary Coulson is an interdisciplinary historian and gender studies scholar, with a focus on the history of women, crime, violence, and incarceration in the United States from the period of the Early Republic through the Civil War. Her work is concerned with matters of race, class, gender, and connections to perceptions of criminality and punishment in United States history. Dr. Coulson will bring her expertise to teaching core and elective courses, such as Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Women’s studies and History of American Medicine: Race, Class, Gender, & Science.
Dr. Hina Shaikh is a feminist and ethnic studies scholar whose work examines the alternative gendered and geographic imaginings of data, archival fictions, space, and place. This work includes analysis of biometric data collection by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from Muslim women and analysis of the Tennessee Integrated Traffic Analysis Network (TITAN) predictive software and its reallocation of policing resources. Dr. Shaikh will bring her expertise to teaching core courses as well as courses in AI, data science, and data analytics, including courses such as Data Feminism and Gender, Race, and Science.