I would like to welcome Alina Parker to our fourth episode of office hours. Alina is a full-time lecturer in the Writing Program and the Russian, Eurasian, and Polish Studies Program at UMass Amherst. Her research interests include postsocialism, Eastern Europe, political contention, and far-right politics. She is originally from Kharkiv, Ukraine, and I took a class on Russia's invasion of Ukraine that she taught last semester.

I am thrilled to welcome İrvin Cemil Schick to our third episode of Office Hours, and first episode on religion, a timelessly controversial topic.

İrvin is a historian who has taught at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Istanbul Şehir University. He has also held guest positions at Boston University, Sabancı University, Boğaziçi University, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where, fun fact, I had an exciting class with him last semester, and had the privilege of writing a paper about authoritarianism and technology in Turkey.

His current research interests are focused on cultural and intellectual history, the arts of the book, gender and sexuality, and human-animal relations, all in the context of Islam and particularly Turkey. He is the author, editor or co-editor of eleven books as well as numerous articles.

Welcome to the show İrvin.

I am excited to welcome Baron Pineda to our second episode on social media. Baron is a professor of cultural anthropology at Oberlin College in Ohio, who specializes in human rights, indigenous peoples, and Latin America. He is the author of Shipwrecked Identities: Navigating Race on Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast, as well as numerous articles in scholarly journals, including work that deals with the intersection of anthropology, internet governance, and human rights

Hello, my name is Isaac Brickman, and welcome to the first episode of Office Hours.

Each week, I will talk to a professor about a topic that is relevant to you. Each professor will have a different perspective on the topic.

The goal is twofold. First, I want to make academia more accessible and applicable to everyone, including non-academic audiences. I also want to help dissolve the boundaries between disciplines by taking a holistic approach to learning.

Our first topic is social media and I am excited to have Ethan Zuckerman on the show to talk about it.

Ethan is an associate Communications, Computer Science, and Public Policy professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, former director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, a ted talker, author, and regretful inventor of the pop-up ad. His crowing achievement, however, is being my thesis advisor.