Faculty & Staff

International & Global Studies

Peter H. Hansen

Professor

Director of International and Global Studies

Humanities & Arts

Email: phansen@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 107

Phone: 508-831-5481

Peter H. Hansen is Professor of History and Director of International and Global Studies at WPI. In this role, responsibilities include enhancing the curricular components of WPI’s global programs, exploring new partnerships, and advising students in global projects. International and Global Studies brings together faculty from the arts and sciences, business, and interdisciplinary studies to enrich students' experience of global engagement on campus and around the world. ... View Profile

W.A. Bland Addison

Associate Professor

Co-Director, Morocco Project Center

Humanities & Arts

Email: addison@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 238

Phone: 508-831-5190

I believe it is important for American students to understand the philosophical and intellectual foundations of their way of viewing the world and how those cultural perspectives are different from other peoples of the world. Therefore, I teach a variety of courses about Western and non-Western civilizations: Introduction to European Cultural History (HI1322), Topics in the Western Intellectual Tradition (HI3323), and Topics in Comparative Civilizations (HI3342). ... View Profile

Ulrike Brisson

Associate Teaching Professor of German

Humanities & Arts

Email: ubrisson@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 333

Phone: 508-831-5742

Coming from a family with a long teaching tradition going back at least to her great-grandfather, teaching has always been fundamental to Professor Brisson’s well-being. Being a German professor at WPI in particular has been a great privilege because the students are motivated, hardworking, and eager to learn. She feels that teaching German language and culture is particularly important at an engineering school with a strong focus on environmental technology and sustainability for a number of reasons. ... View Profile

Fabio Carrera

Associate Teaching Professor

Director, Venice Project Center

Director, Santa Fe Project Center

Interdisciplinary & Global Studies

Email: carrera@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 113

Phone: 508-831-6059

Fabio is the director of the Venice and Santa Fe Project Centers, as well as the founder and director of City Lab, an interdisciplinary research laboratory dedicated to Urban Technology and Information Systems. In addition to a number of scientific papers, his work has been repeatedly featured in National Geographic magazine (most recently in the August 2009 issue), MIT’s Technology Review magazine, the Smithsonian magazine, Wired, New Scientist and Science. He was also featured on BBC Radio and in a National Geographic video completely dedicated to his work in his hometown of Venice, Italy. ... View Profile

Daniel DiMassa

Assistant Teaching Professor

Humanities & Arts

Email: ddimassa@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 106

I come to WPI from Philadelphia, where I completed my PhD in German with a dissertation on the reception and appropriation of Dante’s Commedia by German Romantic writers around 1800. The project encompasses my many academic interests, which reside at the intersection of literature, religion, and aesthetics. This particular nexus of fields reflects a motley background that includes international study in Germany, Austria, and Italy, as well as two years in divinity school. ... View Profile

Wen-Hua Du

Assistant Teaching Professor

Humanities & Arts

Email: wdu2@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 108

Laureen Elgert

Associate Professor

Social Science & Policy Studies

Email: lelgert@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Laboratories

Phone: 508-831-5452

Laureen's interest in environmental studies grew as she traveled through Southeast Asia and South America, noticing that local resource users' idea of environmentalism often bore little resemblance to familiar interpretations. She has since been particularly interested in the environment-development nexus, examining how politics shapes global environmental policy that can, and often does, have profound impacts on local livelihoods. ... View Profile

Parker Daly Everett

Assistant Teaching Professor

Humanities & Arts

Email: pdeverett@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 234

John Starosta Galante

Assistant Teaching Professor

Humanities & Arts

Email: jsgalante@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 234

John Galante’s scholarly interests are primarily in Latin American history, international history and global studies. His teaching and research focuses on international migration and the patterns of homeland connection and receiving-country adaptation associated with migratory movement. His professional experience in the energy sector informs his teaching on the history, geopolitics and global market dynamics of energy. He has particular expertise on South America and the Southern Cone, where he has worked, conducted fieldwork and travelled extensively. View Profile

J. Scott Jiusto

Associate Professor

Interdisciplinary & Global Studies

Email: sjiusto@wpi.edu

Office: Project Center 205

Phone: 508-831-5393

My teaching, research, and community engagement is integrated through my participation in WPIs Global Projects Program, where I help students prepare for and conduct projects in places such as London, Venice, Puerto Rico, Denmark, Washington and Worcester. Through the WPI Cape Town Project Centre (2007-15), my work was an exercise in Shared Action Learning (SAL), which as described to students and others is a way to think about and engage in partnerships for sustainable community development. ... View Profile

Robert Krueger

Associate Professor

Director, Environmental and Sustainability Studies

Co-Director, London Project Center

Director, Worcester Community Project Center

Social Science & Policy Studies

Email: krueger@wpi.edu

Office: SL 223C

Phone: 508-831-5110

Robert Krueger is the founding director of WPI's Environment and Sustainability Studies Program. He has been a Co-Principal Investigator on two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants focused on environmental justice issues in Worcester. He serves as co-chair of the EPA’s Environmental Justice Working Group. He is also board president of the Regional Environmental Council. A broad, international audience recognizes Krueger’s scholarship on urban sustainability. He has published dozens of papers in prestigious internationally peer-reviewed journals. ... View Profile

Aarti Smith Madan

Associate Professor

Humanities & Arts

Email: amadan@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 003

Phone: 508-831-6587

Aarti Smith Madan is an Associate Professor of Spanish & International Studies in the Department of Humanities and Arts at WPI. Her research centers on the ways spatial practices inform the production and consumption of literature, film, and art in Latin America. In her recently published monograph, Lines of Geography in Latin American Narrative: National Territory, National Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), Professor Madan unearths the literary roots of the discipline of geography in nineteenth-century Latin America. ... View Profile

Ingrid E. Matos-Nin

Assoc. Teaching Prof.

Humanities & Arts

Email: imatos@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 05

Phone: 508-831-5356

Stephen M. McCauley

Assistant Teaching Professor

Co-Director, Melbourne Project Center

Interdisciplinary & Global Studies

Email: mccauley@wpi.edu

Office: Project Center 212

Phone: 508-831-6164

A geographer by training, my work bridges scholarship, teaching and practice related to urban environmental planning and sustainable community development. My focus is on coordinating and advising the intensive off-campus Interactive Qualifying Projects through WPI's Global Projects Program, and I am Co-Director of the Melbourne Project Center. I am passionate about connecting students with community partners in project-based learning experiences that support student development and advance community needs. ... View Profile

R. Creighton Peet

Teaching Professor

Director, Namibia Project Center

Director, Hong Kong Project Center

Interdisciplinary & Global Studies

Email: cpeet@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 331

Phone: 508-831-6730

After spending many years working in international development and humanitarian assistance, as well as in international social and environmental education, and anthropological field research, Creighton Peet joined WPI in 2000 as part of its Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division. He loves teaching at WPI and sharing what he has learned over the years through its project-based curriculum. This style of teaching is a way of learning for him, directly and indirectly, and it satisfies his own research interests in the sustainable management of natural resources, especially water. ... View Profile

Geoffrey Pfeifer

Associate Teaching Professor

Humanities & Arts

Email: gpfeifer@wpi.edu

Office: SL 327b

Professor Pfeifer’s research focus in philosophy is on contemporary continental philosophy, social and political philosophy, global justice, and development ethics. He teaches philosophy courses, international studies courses, and for the Great Problems Seminars program. In addition to a number of chapters in edited collections, Professor Pfeifer's work can be found in journals such as Human Studies, The European Legacy, Crisis and Critique, Continental Thought and Theory, and Current Perspectives in Social Theory. ... View Profile

Michael J. Radzicki

Associate Professor

Social Science & Policy Studies

Email: mjradz@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 310C

Phone: 508-831-5296, 508-831-5767

Professor Radzicki is an economist, creator of WPI’s program in system dynamics, and co-creator of WPI’s program in trading and investment system development. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Notre Dame and his training in system dynamics computer simulation modeling from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, he is a certified Rapid-I Predictive Analytics Analyst. Professor Radzicki’s research focuses on predictive analytics, simulation science, and the application of techniques from these areas to problems in economics, finance, and management. ... View Profile

Kent J. Rissmiller

Dean ad interim, Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division

Director, Washington Project Center

Interdisciplinary & Global Studies

Email: kjr@wpi.edu

Office: Project Center 201

Phone: 508-831-5019

Kent Rissmiller completed studies in political science at Muhlenberg College (AB) and Syracuse University (PhD). Along the way, he also completed a JD at the University of New Hampshire Law School, where he worked in the Energy Law Institute. Professor Rissmiller also worked for three years as an attorney for the Public Service Commission of Nevada, where he was involved in setting rates and policies for electric and water utilities. At WPI, Professor Rissmiller teaches government, law, and public policy. He also directs the Pre-Law program and oversees the Law and Technology minor. ... View Profile

Angel A. Rivera

Associate Professor

Humanities & Arts

Email: arivera@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 016

Phone: 508-831-5779

Professor Rivera has been conducting research on 19th- and 20th-century Spanish Caribbean literature and theories related to the exploration of limits or borders (i.e., the edges or places where multiple cultures touch or come into contact). He has been exploring how Caribbean traditional modes of representation have been restructured to significant changes in cultural, literary, and historical contexts. ... View Profile

Jennifer Rudolph

Associate Professor

Humanities & Arts

Email: jrudolph@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 408B

Phone: 508-831-6739

Jennifer Rudolph's main area of research is modern Chinese political history. While her first book dissects institutional change in late imperial China, in her second, she explores identity politics in the Taiwan Strait. In it, Rudolph explores co-optations of a 17th-century pirate-merchant Zheng Chenggong. Through the centuries, Zheng has lived on, with regimes ruling, or desirous of ruling, Taiwan portraying him as a traitor, Confucian god, Chinese nationalist, Japanese nationalist, and the Moses of Taiwan. ... View Profile

Khalid Saeed

Professor

Director System Dynamics Program

Director System Dynamics and Innovation Management Program

Social Science & Policy Studies

Email: saeed@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Labs 312-D

Phone: 508-831-5296, 508-831-5563

Khalid Saeed is professor of economics and system dynamics. Widely recognized for his work on computer modeling and experimental analysis of developmental, organizational, and governance-related issues, he has written two books and numerous articles and book chapters on a variety of developmental and management agendas, including sustainable economic development, infrastructure planning, political economy, supply chain management, and system dynamics modeling. ... View Profile

William San Martin

Assistant Teaching Professor

Humanities & Arts

Email: wsanmartin@wpi.edu

Ingrid K. Shockey

Associate Teaching Professor

Director, India Project Center

Co-Director, New Zealand Project Center

Interdisciplinary & Global Studies

Email: ishockey@wpi.edu

Office: Project Center, 209

Phone: 508-831-6635

Ingrid Shockey is an environmental sociologist whose work focuses on natural literacy and the interplay of human-wilderness boundaries--an interest sparked by a summer job she once held at Yellowstone National Park. From there, her research concerns have grown to include the extent to which people rely on substitutions for authentic experiences in the wild. This includes tracking diminishing environmental literacy and documenting dynamics in how knowledge and perception of nature determine the depth of our engagement with the environment. ... View Profile

Gbetonmasse Blaise Somasse

Assistant Teaching Professor

Social Science & Policy Studies

Email: gbsomasse@wpi.edu

My research is policy-oriented and focuses on development from the perspective of applied economics and policy evaluation. From my experience as economist and development practitioner in West Africa, I came to realize that as long as actual or potential growth is lagging, promoting economic and social development can be extremely challenging. That is why my research focuses on how economic theory and empirical analysis can provide insights to improve growth and development strategies. ... View Profile

Patricia A. Stapleton

Assistant Professor

Director of the Society, Technology, and Policy Program

Social Science & Policy Studies

Email: pastapleton@wpi.edu

Office: Salisbury Laboratories, 223B

Professor Stapleton’s research focuses on food regulation, particularly the role of technology in food safety and security. Her interest in agricultural biotechnology regulation and the differences between the American and European approaches to risk assessment and management for genetically modified organisms were the foundation of her doctoral research. She has continued this work on agricultural biotechnology regulation in the European Union, as well as expanded her focus to include how biotechnology regulatory frameworks impact food production and trade. ... View Profile

Steven S. Taylor

Professor & Interim Dean

Foisie Business School

Email: sst@wpi.edu

Office: Washburn Shops 101

Phone: 508-831-5557

My research is focused in two areas: Organizational aesthetics takes seriously the idea that management is as much an art as it is a science, and applies art-based scholarship and practice to management and organizations. Reflective practice is the ability to analyze our own actions and learn from that how to be more effective, ethical, and artful as managers and leaders. At the heart of my work as a researcher and teacher, is my own practice as a playwright. My plays have been performed in England, France, Poland, Canada, New Zealand, Italy, and the USA. ... View Profile

Seth Tuler

Associate Teaching Professor

Co-Director, Bangkok Project Center

Co-Director, Boston Project Center

Interdisciplinary & Global Studies

Email: stuler@wpi.edu

Office: Project Center 211A

Phone: 508-831-6444

Seth has been part of the Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division since 2002, as teacher, advisor, and co-director of project centers. He is the co-Director of the Bangkok Project Center and co-Director of the Boston Project Center, where he enjoys exposing students to contemporary problems in environmental and public health policy making and challenging them to apply insights emerging from research to practical applications. He loves share his curiosity with students about the ways that people are impacted by different technological and natural systems. ... View Profile

Richard F. Vaz

Director, Center for Project-Based Learning

Co-Director, Bangkok Project Center

Interdisciplinary & Global Studies

Email: vaz@wpi.edu

Office: First Baptist Church, Room 202

Phone: 508-831-5344

As Director of WPI’s Center for Project-Based Learning, I work with colleagues across campus to help advance project-based learning at colleges and universities around the nation and the globe. We also support project-based learning here on the WPI campus. Most of my scholarly and professional activity centers around experiential and international education. Through my involvement in organizations such as the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the American Society for Engineering Education, I work to promote WPI’s approach to undergraduate education as a national model. ... View Profile

Associated Faculty

Name	Title	Department	Email
Melissa Belz	ASSISTANT TEACHING PROFESSOR DIRECTOR, COSTA RICA PROJECT CENTER	Interdisciplinary & Global Studies	mbelz@wpi.edu
Esher F. Boucher-Yip	ASSOCIATE TEACHING PROFESSOR	Humanities & Arts	efboucher@wpi.edu
Mohamed Brahimi	INSTRUCTOR/LECTURER	Humanities & Arts	mbrahimi@wpi.edu
Nicola Bulled	ASSISTANT TEACHING PROFESSOR DIRECTOR, CAPE TOWN PROJECT CENTER	Interdisciplinary & Global Studies	nbulled@wpi.edu
Fabio Carrera	ASSOCIATE TEACHING PROFESSOR DIRECTOR, VENICE PROJECT CENTER DIRECTOR, SANTA FE PROJECT CENTER	Interdisciplinary & Global Studies	carrera@wpi.edu
Corey Denenberg Dehner	ASSOCIATE TEACHING PROFESSOR DIRECTOR, WORCESTER COMMUNITY PROJECT CENTER CO-DIRECTOR, MASSACHUSETTS WATER RESOURCE OUTREACH CENTER	Interdisciplinary & Global Studies	cdehner@wpi.edu
Emily Douglas	PROFESSOR AND DEPARTMENT HEAD	Social Science & Policy Studies	emdouglas@wpi.edu
Michael Elmes	PROFESSOR	Foisie Business School	mbelmes@wpi.edu
Katherine Foo	ASSISTANT TEACHING PROFESSOR	Interdisciplinary & Global Studies	kfoo@wpi.edu
Dominic Golding	TEACHING PROFESSOR DIRECTOR, NANTUCKET PROJECT CENTER DIRECTOR, LONDON PROJECT CENTER	Interdisciplinary & Global Studies	golding@wpi.edu
Robert Hersch	INSTRUCTOR DIRECTOR, GREECE PROJECT CENTER CO-DIRECTOR, ALBANIA PROJECT CENTER CO-DIRECTOR, SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS PROJECT CENTER	Interdisciplinary & Global Studies	hersh@wpi.edu
J. Scott Jiusto	ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR	Interdisciplinary & Global Studies	sjiusto@wpi.edu
Courtney Brooke Kurlanska	ASSISTANT TEACHING PROFESSOR	Interdisciplinary & Global Studies	cbkurlanska@wpi.edu
Ingrid E. Matos-Nin	ASSOC. TEACHING PROFESSOR	Humanities & Arts	imatos@wpi.edu
Svetlana Nikitina	ASSOC. TEACHING PROFESSOR	Humanities & Arts	svetlana@wpi.edu
Oleg Pavlov	ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR	Social Science & Policy Studies	opavlov@wpi.edu
R. Creighton Peet	TEACHING PROFESSOR DIRECTOR, NAMIBIA PROJECT CENTER DIRECTOR, HONG KONG PROJECT CENTER	Interdisciplinary & Global Studies	cpeet@wpi.edu
Michael J. Radzicki	ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR	Social Science & Policy Studies	mjradz@wpi.edu
Khalid Saeed	PROFESSOR DIRECTOR SYSTEM DYNAMICS PROGRAM DIRECTOR SYSTEM DYNAMICS AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT PROGRAM	Social Science & Policy Studies	saeed@wpi.edu
Aaron Sakulich	ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR	Civil & Environmental Engineering	arsakulich@wpi.edu
Ingrid K. Shockey	ASSOCIATE TEACHING PROFESSOR DIRECTOR, INDIA PROJECT CENTER CO-DIRECTOR, NEW ZEALAND PROJECT CENTER	Interdisciplinary & Global Studies	ishockey@wpi.edu
Alexander D. Smith	ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR DIRECTOR OF THE SSPS EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS LABORATORY	Social Science & Policy Studies	adksmith@wpi.edu
Elisabeth "Lisa" Stoddard	ASSISTANT TEACHING PROFESSOR	Undergraduate Studies	eastoddard@wpi.edu
Andrew Trapp	ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR	Foisie Business School	atrapp@wpi.edu
Seth Tuler	ASSOCIATE TEACHING PROFESSOR CO-DIRECTOR, BANGKOK PROJECT CENTER CO-DIRECTOR, BOSTON PROJECT CENTER	Interdisciplinary & Global Studies	stuler@wpi.edu
Nicholas Williams	ASSISTANT TEACHING PROFESSOR	Interdisciplinary & Global Studies	newilliams@wpi.edu