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Stephen Antonoplis
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
Stephen Antonoplis is a psychologist specializing in social and personality psychology. His research focuses on personality processes related to intergroup relations and resource allocation and the measurement of social and psychological constructs. His past work has examined personality factors motivating cross-race friendship, how personal income shapes how people think about their futures, and how to best conceptualize and measure “socioeconomic status.” His lab uses various methods, including surveys, panel and archival datasets, social network analysis, and experiments. His current work includes projects on the historical development of class identity in the U.S. and differences in the relationships occupied by different- and same-race contacts in personal networks (e.g., coworker, friend).
Previously, Antonoplis was a postdoctoral research scholar at Northwestern University. He completed his Ph.D. in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and his B.A. in psychology with a minor in economics at Northwestern.
Antonoplis joined the UCR faculty in January 2024.
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Alejandra Arce
Assistant Professor
(she/her)
Department of Psychology
Alejandra Arce earned her Ph.D. in clinical and community psychology from Georgia State University and her B.A. in psychology from Florida International University. She completed her predoctoral clinical psychology internship at the UCSF Child and Adolescent Services Multicultural Clinical Training Program. Before joining the University of California, Riverside, she was a postdoctoral scholar at UCLA's Culture and Race/Ethnicity in Youth Mental Health lab. She was funded through a National Institute of Mental Research Supplement to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research.
Arce conducts strengths- and community-engaged research with immigrant and BIPOC youth. Her research spans the translational science spectrum and aims to: (1) advance theoretical and empirical models of resilience and resistance to oppression through a critical socio-ecological lens; (2) translate basic science into prevention programs that are empowering and facilitate positive developmental and mental health outcomes; and (3) evaluate the effectiveness of community interventions that advance equity efforts.
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Olivia Atherton
Assistant Professor
(she/her)
Department of Psychology
Olivia Atherton received her Ph.D. in psychology in 2020 from the University of California, Davis, and her B.S. in psychology in 2013 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Before joining the University of California, Riverside, she was a post-doctoral researcher at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine ( 2020-2022) and an assistant professor at the University of Houston (2022-2024). Atherton’s research program sits at the intersection of social-personality, health, and developmental psychology, where her primary focus is to understand the associations among self-regulation, sociocultural contexts, and mental and physical health across the lifespan. Her lab leverages large-scale longitudinal studies and advanced statistical modeling techniques. It focuses on working with socioculturally diverse populations often underrepresented in psychological science, including Latinx communities, socioeconomically disadvantaged and rural populations, and aging samples from across the globe. Ultimately, Atherton's research program aims to improve the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities.
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William Bauer
Professor
(he/him)
Department of History
William Bauer is an enrolled citizen of the Round Valley Indian Tribes and a professor of history at the University of California, Riverside. Bauer comes to Riverside after teaching at the University of Wyoming and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His research is focused on oral history, labor, and California Indian history. He is the author of We Are the Land: A Native History of California, with Damon Akins, (University of California Press, 2021), California Through Native Eyes: Reclaiming History (University of Washington Press, 2016), and “We Were All Like Migrant Workers Here”: Work, Community, and Memory on California’s Round Valley Reservation, 1850-1941 (University of North Carolina Press, 2009). Bauer is the president-elect of the Western History Association. His future research examines natural resource extraction on northern California Indian lands and the history of treaties in California. Bauer will teach classes on California Indian and American Indian history broadly. |
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Gene Brewer
Professor
(he/him/his)
Department of Psychology
With an extensive background in cognitive psychology, Gene Brewer’s research delves into the mechanisms of attention, memory, and executive control in humans. His work, often employing neuroimaging methods like pupillometry and EEG, has significantly contributed to our understanding of cognitive processes. Brewer is well-known for his collaborative spirit and interdisciplinary approach, often bridging the gap between basic and applied research. Before joining University of California, Riverside, he was a faculty member at Arizona State University, where he was recognized for his outstanding teaching and mentoring. Brewer’s leadership and commitment to advancing cognitive science make him a valuable addition to UC Riverside’s academic community, and he is eager to foster new research initiatives and collaborations in his new role.
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Xiao Chen
Assistant Professor
(he/him/his)
Department of History
Xiao Chen researches Qing and Modern Chinese history. His book manuscript, “Law, Ethnicity, and the Rise of Convict-Labor Regime in the Qing Empire (1636-1912),” explores how Qing colonial practices in the Inner-Asian frontiers contributed to the development of a convict labor system that focused on categorizing, exploiting, and "rehabilitating" convicts. His recent publications include a journal article on how ethnicity became a factor in jurisdictional differences when trying sexual offenses in eighteenth-century Qing legal culture and a book chapter on indigenous Taiwanese skin markings in early modern European and Chinese travel writings. Chen earned his Ph.D. from the history department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 2024. Before joining University of California, Riverside, he taught at Grinnell College, Iowa. |
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Kendra Gage
Assistant Professor of Teaching
(she/her)
Department of History
Kendra Gage is a historian of the civil rights movement, sports and Olympic history, women in the west, and the American West. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Before joining the University of Calfiornia, Riverside, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary, Gender and Ethnic Studies at UNLV where she helped to rebuild the African American Studies Department. Gage is working on both a manuscript titled "Creating the Black California Dream: Virna Canson and the Black Freedom Struggle in the Golden State from 1940-1988" and a co-edited book, " A People's Guide to Las Vegas." Her work and interests are centered on uncovering the rich and vibrant stories of political struggle, oppression, and resistance in the everyday landscapes of people's communities.
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Emily Graham
Assistant Professor of Teaching
(she/her)
Department of Comparative Literature and Languages
Emily Graham received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Arlington, where she focused on psycholinguistics and phonetics. Her psycholinguistics research focused on sentence-level processing, specifically how we link pronouns to their antecedents and the neurophysiological processing of determiner phrases. In phonetics, she has published work on phonetic imitation of English sibilants in native and non-native speech. Additionally, she is interested in pedagogical methods and has recently co-authored an article discussing methods of de-centering Standard American English in the linguistics classroom. Graham is also an active member of the Linguistic Society of America and serves on several committees devoted to linguistic pedagogy and gender equity in linguistics.
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Elizabeth Hanna Rubio
Assistant Professor
(she/her)
Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies
Elizabeth Hanna Rubio builds on her work as a community organizer and cultural anthropologist to conduct ethnographic research that responds to emergent questions in leftist social justice spaces. After receiving her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine, in 2021, she served as a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. Hanna Rubio is currently completing her book manuscript, “Dreams Beyond Recognition: Liberalism’s False Negotiations and the Search for Alternatives in Korean American Immigrant Justice Work.” Based on seven years of ethnographic research with undocumented Korean American organizers in Southern California, Washington D.C., and Chicago, the book examines the fraught politics of multiracial coalition-building in immigrant justice spaces and the complexities of enacting immigrant justice through an abolitionist lens. Hanna Rubio is the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal for the Anthropology of North America. Her work has been published in Amerasia, Frontiers: A Women’s Studies Journal, the LA Review of Books, and other mediums.
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Donggyu Kim
Professor
(he/him/his)
Department of Economics
Donggyu Kim was an associate professor in the College of Business at KAIST from 2017 to 2024 and a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Operations Research & Financial Engineering at Princeton University from 2016 to 2017. Kim completed a Ph.D. in statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His doctoral dissertation was guided by Professor Yazhen Wang and is about high-dimensional matrix inferences.
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Ajin Lee
Assistant Professor
(she/her)
Department of Economics
Ajin Lee is an applied microeconomist who studies topics in health, social insurance, and policies targeting disadvantaged populations in the United States. Her research has explored the implications of the design of public health insurance programs, the impacts of financial and health shocks to families, and the childhood environment on health and well-being. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University and her B.A. in economics from Yonsei University. Before joining UCR, Lee was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Michigan State University and a visiting assistant professor at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
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Timothy Petete
Associate Professor of Teaching
Department of English
Timothy Petete is a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. He earned a Ph.D. in English at the University of Oklahoma.
Petete’s teaching and research interests include American literature, Indigenous studies, visual and sonic rhetoric, and memory culture. He is co-editing a special issue of Great Plains Quarterly (University of Nebraska Press) on contemporary Indigenous Pop Art and the first book with the University of Oklahoma Press about the FX television series Reservation Dogs. This volume will feature the contributions of filmmakers, knowledge keepers, artists, creative writers, actors, tribal representatives, and academics.
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Heather Rastovac Akbarzadeh
Assistant Professor
(she/her/hers)
Department of Dance
Heather Rastovac Akbarzadeh is an interdisciplinary scholar-artist. Building upon two decades as a dance-maker, artistic director, and dramaturg among diasporic SWANA (South West Asian and North African) communities, Heather’s research examines diasporic SWANA performances of refusal that are oriented toward undermining colonial structures of seeing, feeling, and knowing the “Middle East.” Heather earned her Ph.D. in performance studies from the University of California, Berkeley, with a designated emphasis on women, gender, and sexuality. She then held a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship in dance studies at Stanford University and a UC Chancellor’s postdoctoral fellowship in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis. Her monograph-in-progress is titled “Choreographing the Iranian Diaspora: Dance, Spectatorship, and the Politics of Belonging.” Her publications include chapters in Dance in the Persianate World: History, Aesthetics, and Performance (2023), Performing Iran: Cultural Identity and Theatrical Performance (2022), and Futures of Dance Studies (2020).
Rastovac Akbarzadeh joined the UCR faculty in January 2024.
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Trisha Remetir
Assistant Professor
(she/her)
Department of Comparative Literature and Languages
Trisha Federis Remetir specializes in critical Filipinx studies, Asian diasporic literature, (post)colonial studies and the environmental humanities. In her research and pedagogy, she is committed to witnessing the racial and environmental histories of the Philippine archipelago and connecting to other sites of environmental survival and struggle through the medium of water. Her book project, tentatively titled “Unfamiliar Waters,” explores how extractive projects in waters around the Philippines have altered and influenced contemporary Filipinx/o cultural productions. Remetir received her Ph.D. in English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and was a 2022-2024 Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Riverside.
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Cassia Roth
Associate Professor
Department of Society, Environment and Health Equity
Cassia Roth holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an M.P.H. in epidemiology from the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on understanding gendered and racialized health inequities in the past and present in the Portuguese-speaking world. Her first book, A Miscarriage of Justice: Women’s Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil (Stanford, 2020), won the Murdo J. MacLeod Prize from the Southern Historical Association and the Choice Outstanding Academic Title from the American Library Association. Her other published work, on topics as diverse as the Brazilian feminist scientist Bertha Lutz, the recent history of abortion activism in Latin America, and the history of cesarean sections, has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals, and her article “From Free Womb to Criminalized Woman: Fertility Control in Brazilian Slavery and Freedom,” won the 2018 Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Best Article Prize. Roth will teach the history of public health and health equity. |
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Charles Sepulveda
Assistant Professor
Department of Ethnic Studies
Charles Sepulveda studies California Indian histories, focusing on the mission system’s enslavement of Native peoples and their resistance. He earned his Ph.D. in ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside, in 2016 and held previous appointments at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and the University of Utah. Sepulveda received the Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rematriation Fellowship and the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. Sepulveda’s first book, “Native Alienation: Spiritual Conquest and the Violence of California Missions,” will be published by the University of Washington Press in 2024. His next manuscript will examine the environmental devastation to Southern California’s riparian ecosystem and the efforts to rematriate land/water into a relationship beyond heteropatriarchy. His article, “Our Sacred Waters: Theorizing Kuuyam as a Decolonial Possibility,” offered guests the opportunity to radically alter their relations to place. Sepulveda is a board member of the Acjachemen Tongva Land Conservancy and the Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy. |
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Dylan Shaul
Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy
Dylan Shaul specializes in 18th- to 19th-century philosophy, mainly German idealism and Jewish philosophy. He is also interested in early modern philosophy, 20th-century European philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. He has published on figures including Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Rosenzweig, Levinas, Adorno, Kristeva, Derrida, and Badiou, on themes including faith, forgiveness, hospitality, love, mourning, recognition, reconciliation, redemption, and repentance. He has also published on tragedy and comedy, from Euripides to Alfred Hitchcock and the Marx Brothers.
Shaul’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of the History of Philosophy, Hegel Bulletin, Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Philosophy Today, Idealistic Studies, Derrida Today, Journal of Continental Philosophy, Symposium, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Film-Philosophy, and Canadian Journal of Film Studies, among other venues.
From 2023-2024, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in 2023.
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Kevin Shih
Associate Professor
(he/him/his)
Department of Economics
Kevin Shih is a labor economist with expertise in the economics of immigration in the United States. His work has been published in leading journals such as Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Labor Economics, and AEJ Economic Policy. He previously held positions at Queens College CUNY, the CUNY Graduate Center, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is a research affiliate of IZA Institute of Labor Economics, the University of California, Davis, Global Migration Center, the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research, and Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, and a special sworn status researcher of the U.S. Census Bureau. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Davis and a B.A. in economics and literature from Claremont McKenna College.
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Daphnie Sicre
Assistant Professor
(she/her/ella)
Department of Theatre, Film, and Digital Production
Daphnie Sicre is a multi-hyphenated theatre artist. She is a director-dramaturg-scholar-educator who shares a deep passion for Black and Latine perspectives in theatre, especially AfroLatinidad. Engaging in anti-racist and culturally competent theatre practices, she helps bring stories from the page to the stage. She was recently named co-artistic director of Ammunition Theatre in Los Angeles, and co-directs the Candela Fellowship for Latine and Caribbean Playwrights with the Dramatist Guild in New York. Her latest publication is a book chapter on Afrolatine identity for The Routledge Companion Latinx Theatre & Performance. She also recently started writing for HowlRound, where she led a series with AfroLatine playwrights and wrote on Latine theatrical collaboration across the country. When not writing, directing, or doing dramaturgy, Sicre leads DEI theatre workshops across the country on pedagogy. Lastly, she serves as a culture consultant for Nickelodeon, having worked on the Emmy-nominated series Santiago of the Seas, and the movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; Mutant Mayhem. Sicre holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from New York University in Educational Theatre, M.A. from Columbia University in social studies education, and attended Leigh University for her B.A. in theatre, journalism, and history.
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Amy Skjerseth
Assistant Professor
(she/her)
Department of Music
Amy Skjerseth’s scholarship focuses on the intersections of music, media, material culture, and technology. Skjerseth’s monograph-in-progress, “Sound Machines: Popular Music's Visible Past” (under contract with University of California Press), explores how 1960s transistor radios to 2000s vocaloids and 2020s deepfakes influenced musical and visual culture. Her second book, also in progress, is called “The Feminist Wall of Sound.” Skjerseth has a Ph.D. in cinema and media studies from the University of Chicago, an M.A. in English from McGill University, a B.M. in oboe performance from the Eastman School of Music, and a B.A. in English from the University of Rochester. Her work is widely published across music and media journals and collections. She also creates video essays and podcasts and has organized several public-facing conferences, including Tay Day: Liverpool’s Version and the Great Lakes Association for Sound Studies.
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Tabea Springstein
Assistant Professor
(she/her)
Department of Psychology
Tabea Springstein’s research centers on the dynamics of emotion and emotion regulation in everyday life. She is particularly interested in how emotions are experienced and managed across various situations and social contexts and how these emotional processes evolve throughout the adult lifespan. Her lab uses experience sampling and passive sensing methods to gather data directly from individuals in their natural environments. Through this approach, her long-term goal is to uncover individual differences in emotional processes that could lead to targeted interventions to enhance emotional well-being. Springstein holds both a B.S. and M.S. in psychology from the University of Vienna in Austria and earned her Ph.D. in psychological and brain sciences from Washington University in St. Louis.
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Megan Tabaque
Assistant Professor of Teaching
(she/her)
Department of Theatre, Film, and Digital Production
Megan Tabaque is thrilled to begin her full tenure as an assistant professor of acting, playwriting, and screenwriting at University of California, Riverside, after being a visiting assistant professor last winter. She comes to Riverside from Emory University, where she was the 2021-2023 Playwriting Fellow. Previously, she taught creative writing at Bennington College and has written for the immersive entertainment company Meow Wolf.
Megan writes to create new mythologies, using pop cultural tropes as accessible entry points. Recent plays include her meditation on motherhood, Britney Approximately (an adaptation of Medea remixed with the Spears conservatorship) and Marry Me, Bruno Mars, a socio-comic caper about a QAnon believer on a rescue mission to save a massage parlor worker during the Super Bowl.
Her work has been developed, commissioned, and produced by the Alliance Theater, The Road Theater, Inner City Arts, Salvage Vanguard Theater, Tofte Lake Center, The Workshop Theater, Seven Devils, Texas State University, and Vanderbilt University. She has an M.F.A. in playwriting and fiction from the Michener Center for Writers.
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Cecilia Vasquez
Assistant Professor
(she/her/hers)
Department of Anthropology
Cecilia Vasquez is an activist-engaged scholar who received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Following graduate school, she was an ACLS Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Davis’ Global Migration Center, and a UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of ethnic studies at University of California, Riverside.
Dr. Vasquez’s research focuses on grassroots responses to sanctuary policies, detention, and care practices in the Inland Empire. Her areas of interest are citizenship and belonging, accompaniment, and migration. Currently, she is working on her book manuscript, “Sanctuary i.e.: Meaning and Future of Sanctuary in the Inland Empire.”
Raised in the Inland Empire, Vasquez is committed to co-creating research alongside community partners. Her public scholarship led to collective poetry workshops, choreographing the folk opera Canción del Inmigrante, and community conferences. At UCR, Dr. Vasquez looks forward to continuing to develop research grounded in social justice, community, and service.
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Kēhaulani Vaughn
Associate Professor
(she/they)
Department of Ethnic Studies
Kēhaulani Vaughn is a Kanaka ‘Ōiwi scholar whose research engages Pacific Islander and Indigenous feminist theorizations of land, environment, and regeneration. Her book manuscript, Trans Indigeneity: The Politics of California Indian and Native Hawaiian Relations, is about the trans-Indigenous recognitions between Native Hawaiians living in the U.S. and California Indian tribes. Previously, she was a Ford Postdoctoral Fellow with the University of Minnesota and an assistant professor in the Department of Education, Culture & Society at the University of Utah. At Utah, she established the Research Center for Pasifika and Indigenous Knowledges as a co-principal investigator for grants awarded by the Mellon Foundation. Additionally, her research on Indigenous education received Spencer Foundation grants. As a community-engaged scholar, she sits on boards and co-founded Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC), which empowers Pacific Islanders through education, research, and advocacy. Vaughn earned her Ph.D. in ethnic studies from University of California, Riverside, in 2017.
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Miriam Venturini
Assistant Professor
(she/her)
Department of Economics
Miriam Venturini is a political economist and economic historian. Her current work explores the influence of grassroots organizations on political participation. She completed her Ph.D. in economics at the University of Zurich in July 2024, after earning an M.Sc. in economics from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics in 2017 and a B.A. in international studies from the University of Trieste. Her future projects will expand her research agenda on labor unions and their impact on the economy and the political arena.
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